


Tactile

by Han_shot_first



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Augmentations (Deus Ex), Body Horror, F/M, Gen, Hands, Light BDSM, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Non-Consensual, Open Relationships, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Aftermath, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rare Pairings, Sex, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Spy versus Spy, Torture, really slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2019-09-05 15:54:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 44,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16813759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Han_shot_first/pseuds/Han_shot_first
Summary: "He crushed the bloom in a shiny, black augmented fist. He felt the core of the peony, hard as a nut, as it burst under the unyielding pressure of his hand. But of the fragile petals…. he felt nothing."It started with a flower seller at London Bridge Underground Station. The rumor of a highly experimental sensory aug leads Jensen into an unexpected and dangerous game of spy versus spy with Faridah Malik, an extremely talented VTOL pilot and former Sarif Industries colleague.Mal has a secret, and she will do anything to protect it and those whom she loves, even if it costs her everything.Explicit for violence and sexual themes. Mind the tags. Trigger warnings.This is an Adam Jensen and Faridah Malik story. All other pairings are....fluid.





	1. Chapter 1

It was the flower seller at the London Bridge Underground station who started it. 

“Roses for your sweetheart, mate?” the vendor had called at him. Jensen had blinked in surprise under his dark shades. He wasn’t exactly the type of customer he would have thought a flower vendor would call out to, even if his tactical gear tailor tended to put him in fleur-de-lis patterns.

“I got some real big peonies too,” the vendor persisted, having caught Jensen’s attention. His eyes widened in shock. “If you’re interested, like,” the big man said with a wink. “You look like you got the credits.”

Even before a biological phage had wiped out hundreds of peony varieties grown by big commercial flower farms in North America and Europe, peonies had only ever been available for a few months out of the year. Long stemmed and naturally occurring without any thorns, they had always been Megan’s favourite. Lucky for him, she’d never been fussy about colors. 

“The bigger and smellier the better,” she’d always say with a smile. The large, unopened buds were sold at an absolute premium by florists. They bloomed so briefly, usually only a week, before the huge petals would begin to fall into piles at the foot of the large vase in their living room. The house would continue to smell of their pure, sweet scent for days, even after she would sigh and sadly gather the wilted stems into her arms and dispose of them into the organic recycling unit. 

His mind recalled how those early summer flowers had signalled the end of the winter, the start of new growth, of new possibilities. So when the phage had made it all but impossible to find them, he’d sought out a florist with a connection with a botanic geneticist working with Tai Yong in Hengsha, made a deal, and for ten years, Megan had her flowers. Even after they broke up, a dozen peonies were delivered once a year, like clockwork. 

‘Such a sucker,’ he thought sourly. But he stared at the unopened buds, unable to look away. ‘Should remember to call Tony, and cancel that order.’ But the flowers went to Megan’s mother now, and he just couldn’t bring himself to hurt Cassandra Reed. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Come to think of it, he didn’t know if Cass knew where Megan was now, or if Megan had bothered to let her mother know she was alive. A real piece of work, his ex. 

“How much,” he said roughly to the vendor. He was surprised by his own question. It just seemed to pop out of his mouth without his permission.

“A ton each,” the vendor replied promptly. “It's the phage, innit? Man’s gotta feed his family, mate.” 

Jensen rolled his eyes and shoulders, and said, “Tai Yong fixed the phage but controls the market. A monkey for six, ‘mate’. Final offer.”

“Done, Yankee Doodle. You want a ribbon with that?” 

\---

Four days later, he stared at the open buds in his Zeleň apartment, and breathed in deeply to drown his senses in their familiar sweet, slightly spicy scent. Tai Yong had been smart enough to alter the genetics to counter the phage, but not mess around with anything else. 

‘Guess the market and the botanists wouldn’t tolerate anything else,’ he thought cynically. ‘And Tai Yong always want a return on their investments.’ His hands twitched. His augs ached in the phantom pain throughout his system. He buried it in his mind, under all the other pain, and took another swig of cheap blended whisky. The good stuff he saved for better days. And this was not one of those days.

Cautiously, like he was approaching a trip mine, he reached out and touched a petal.

Nothing. He felt nothing.

He tried not to feel disappointed. He rubbed the petals with his fingers gently so as not to shred the delicate bloom. 

Still nothing.

His memories opened. He recalled endlessly long, sweet nights with Megan, when he teased her with an open bloom. The softness of her skin, the tanginess of her sweat and the salt of her sex. The smell of them mixing in the air with the bloom of the peony. He remembered feeling the silkiness of her body against his fingers as he tickled, while she had laughed and squirmed under him. He had loved to hold the long stem of a blooming peony in one hand, gently draw it down her rib, under her breast, then suddenly tickle her with his other hand, chuckling as she shrieked.

“Don’t tease!” she’d cry, but they'd both known she wanted more teasing, so much more. “Please Adam, don’t,” she’d moan, and he'd switch back to the peony, swirling around her tight nipple, so happy to give her what she desperately craved, knowing she needed to be driven out of her mind, her clever, brilliant---

He crushed the bloom in a shiny, black augmented fist. He felt the core of the peony, hard as a nut, as it burst under the unyielding pressure of his hand. But of the fragile petals…. he felt nothing.

\---

“Koller,” he subvocalized. “I need a favour.”

“Jensen!” Václav chirped like a little bird, high on caffeine and augmented life. “Shit yeah, I owe you much for everything you’ve done for me. What can I do for you, my friend? Need some Praxis? Some Nu-poz? A tune-up? The Chair has missed you!”  


Jensen rolled his eyes. He couldn't help it. Václav was a good doctor, as far as independent, unlicensed, off-the-grid, experimental augmentation doctors went. But he was also so very, very young. 

“I’ve been hearing about some new augs. For hands,” Jensen said carefully. “Increased sensitivity, modifications to tactile senses, that kind of thing.”

“Oh shit, yeah,” Václav cooed in enthusiasm, always happy to wax lyrical about his trade. “Was stalled at early stages at Sarif, but rumours say is now in final testing at TYM." 

“Drawbacks?” Jensen sharpened immediately. He thought the research was decades off. Was thinking this was a long shot and was ready to be disappointed. But maybe when Sarif Industries was bought out by Tai Yong, the latter had been able to jump forward, given they had more money, more resources. Maybe Tai Yong just needed a few pieces of research from Sarif to put it all together. Or maybe the tech was still buggy as hell. 

“Don’t know!” Václav crowed back happily. “Haven’t had a chance to try it out myself! But if you get the augs, I’ll test it for you. Free of charge!”

“Negative, Koller,” Jensen growled in the tone of voice he used to command his SWAT team. Only Koller would be crazy enough to take augs still in development, happily strap them into his system, switch them on, and damn the consequences.

“No?” Václav said, in a suddenly scared, almost childlike voice. He sounded like a kid who was just told that no, he can’t have a cookie before dinner, because it’ll ruin his appetite. And that if he tried it anyway, there will be consequences.

“No. I’ll get the augs.”

“Oh…kay.”

“And you’ll put them in me.” Again, the words just seemed to pop out of him. Like they’d been sitting under his skin, aching to come out, like a round being spat out by his Sentinel. Like he’d been suppressing his desires for so long, and they wouldn't be denied anymore. The words had fled from him, and he sat still in the silence, stunned at his own audacity. 

Apparently, I’m nuts too, Jensen thought to himself, but Václav laughed with surprise and joy, and began telling him all the test protocols he’d have ready and waiting when Jensen returned from stealing the experimental tech from Hengsha.

But he looked again at the peonies left in the vase, and stroked the petals gently with a fingertip that couldn't feel them. He nodded once to himself, signed off with Koller, and cut off the Infolink.

\---


	2. Chapter 2

Adam wasn’t used to calling in favours. Even when he’d been a cop, and then later as head of a SWAT team, calling in favours from friends had never sat right with him. 

Oh, he'd pay for information from his sources, or even favours from them, but that was just credits. He knew better than to believe their stories that it was going towards sheltered housing, or food, or to help out their dear old mother. He knew all too well what the shakes meant, the twitchiness in their eyes, the way they moved in the darkness. He chose to look the other way, to take the little sacrifice to the god of justice to hunt the bigger prey, hook the bigger fish, bring down the real predators who lived in the penthouses and had the luxury vehicles. The ones who passed his little network of informants every day and dismissed them as useless, meaningless lives they could ignore on their way as they destroyed their communities and took whatever struck their fancy that day. 

The experiences had honed his mind into a weapon capable of handling the mental strain of wandering into a shitstorm and emerging mostly intact. He could be honest with himself now; on bad days, he admitted the augs had merely added a carapace to a system in his mind he'd been building with his own hands for years. On better days, he told himself he was capable of doing more to help the world now than he ever could have without augmentations. Sometimes he almost believed that. Then he’d try to pick up a towel, pick up some paperwork, or god forbid, try to make some actual food, and come crashing back down to earth with the realisation that he couldn’t feel any of those things. The flesh was gone. Only the carapace remained.

These days, he was completely used to finding his own path, working alone, crawling through miles of shit and tough choices that haunted his conscience in the dead of the night, and never, ever showing his hand. But even he couldn’t fly to Hengsha without a VTOL. And there was only one pilot he knew with absolutely certainty he could trust to take him there discreetly and get him back in one piece. 

The only snag was, she’d probably want to know all the details. And he wasn’t sure how much he wanted to give, even as he knew he didn’t want to lie to her. 

There was something pure about Faridah Malik. She never lied, but she wasn’t naïve about the world around them either. She just didn’t didn’t let herself get drawn into the darkness around her. She rose into the sky instead, her eyes shining with more than just the sunlight and the panels at her fingertips. She wore her heart proudly and unapologetically on her sleeve, and he was drawn to her openness like a moth to a candle. It was everything he intrinsically was not, and he simply couldn’t help his fascination, even as he struggled with his own emotions.

His hands twitched. He opened another bottle of whisky – only this time, it was something special he'd picked up in London. Talisker, the only single malt from the Isle of Skye. 'Only the best for a woman of the skies', he thought, and steeled himself for the call.

“Malik. Thanks for the little surprise,” was his opening gambit into her Infolink. There was a moment of static as her connection responsed, and he heard with perfect clarity her intake of breath, the slightly raspy chuckle, and a little yawn that he instinctively started to return. 

‘Still human’, he thought as the yawn turned into a real jaw cracker. ‘No matter how many augs they shoved into my head, oscitation is hardwired code’. 

“Hey there, Spyboy,” she said around her yawn. It was sleepy and sexy, and she smacked her lips as she woke up. “You know it’s the middle of the night here?”

“Sorry. Wasn’t sure where you would be when I called. Where’s home these days?” 

“Oh… around.” 

He was surprised by her vagueness. Malik had never been anything less than forthcoming in the past, but he'd lost track of her after Sarif Industries fell. He'd suspected she was the one who had pulled him out of the wreckage of Panchaea, but they’d never had a chance to really talk about it.

‘That’s not true,’ he rebuked himself sternly. ‘You just didn’t want to know if you owed her for saving your life. Or if she had anything to do with that missing year in Alaska.’

“So it’s 2am in Prague, and I woke you up. And you left that little surprise in my cereal box. Malik, are you nearby?”

She chuckled again, warm and throaty. His body tightened. He’d heard that sound in a warm, sleepy woman’s voice before, as it stretched across his body next to him and pulled him into heady strokes, licks across his neck and body, but it felt like a lifetime ago.

“Adam,” she said sweetly. “This a booty call?”

He shut down. He didn’t know why, but it was hard and brutal. He was all business now.

“Malik, I need a favour. Need to take a run at Tai Yong. I’m sorry to ask, but I don’t have---”

“Hey. I’m not a taxi service.” Her voice clipped him off. She was all business now too, and she sounded pissed.

“I know. I know Malik. If I had someone else I could trust, I would.”

“Last time we went there, if you recall, it didn’t exactly go down well.”

She was definitely pissed. Fuck, this wasn’t how he wanted this conversation to go. He’d hoped she was somewhere in North America. The time difference would’ve put her in the evening, but not the middle of the night. 

He remembered their last trip to Hengsha. He remembered her blood, a lot of grenades, and barely scraping out of there with their bodies and souls in the same integrated pieces.

“I remember, Malik.”

“Good. Because if we do this, I’m going to need to know exactly why. Last time we went in, we were on payroll, so it wasn’t my place to ask questions. This time, if we go in, we’re partners. I’m not a goddamned taxi service. You’re going to tell me why this is so important to you, or I’m not risking my bird.”

'Interesting how she put her VTOL above her body', he thought. 'More importantly, she isn’t questioning whether she wants in. She just wants to know why it’s important'.

He sighed. He'd known it would come down to this.

“Are you in Prague or not, Mal,” he said quietly.

“Got any of the good stuff?” she replied.

“Talisker. Twenty-five year old.”

“Mmmh. My favourite. Good boy. See you in fifteen.”


	3. Chapter 3

One of Adam’s earliest memories from his childhood involved his grandfather and his gifts. When Pop came over, he came bearing gifts. Sometimes they were simple things, like a supremely old-fashioned hand-carved top, which Adam had thought was stupid until his Pop had put a piece of string to it and set it spinning. After that, Adam had fairly pounced on the thing, determined to figure out exactly how fast it could go, and if it could tolerate being thrown, and how exactly did Pop do that trick to make it spin and come back to him? 

Pop had thrown his white-haired head back and laughed, deep and long, and told him, “Never underestimate the old ways, boy!”

Adam had grinned back. He had adored his Pop.

Over time, the gifts had become more complicated, but no less interesting. A Bowie knife on his tenth birthday had been particularly memorable. His mother had been apoplectic, but his father had merely shrugged. Pop had given him one just like it on his tenth birthday, he’d said. 

“If he cuts a finger off, I’ll never forgive any of you!” she’d huffed, as she stormed into the kitchen to grab the birthday cake.

“Can I cut the cake with my new knife?” Adam had called after her.

All the Jensens, including the boy, had laughed uproaringly as she called exasperatedly, “God save me from Jensens!” 

His father had smirked at him and said, “Just be careful with the edge. I’ll show you how to keep it sharp. Never test the edge with your finger, unless you’re prepared to lose some of it. If you treat that blade right, it’ll never fail you. I still have the one Dad gave me on my tenth birthday.” He looked fondly at his father, who smiled back, lost in their shared memories.

“Earth to Jensen,” Malik repeated. “Calling Jensen. Repeat, calling Jensen.”

“I’m here. Sorry,” he replied, blinking away his thoughts. He hadn’t thought of Pop in years, or his parents. He had no idea why he was recalling them now. 

The Bowie knife had become redundant ever since the nanoblades had been installed, and he hadn’t pulled it out of the drawer next to his bedside in over two years. It still felt odd, the weight of it missing from not carrying it around, but it had felt so superfluous. So it lived in the drawer, lightly oiled and kept razor sharp, but otherwise dormant. 

Then he’d tried whittling a top with his nanoblade. That had been a total disaster, and he’d vowed never to try it again.

'Never underestimate the old ways,' he reminded himself, and put a pin in his mental to-do list: find some nice wood blanks to start whittling again properly, the way Pop had taught him.

Malik sighed and took another sip of the Talisker.

“I’m not saying I’m not willing to go twenty questions, and drink all your good stuff,” she drawled, “but it is nearly 3am, and at some point you should just get to the part where you tell me why you need to hit TYM again.”

And there it was. He’d become so still that she thought he really wouldn’t answer, and she really would have to drink all his whisky first. Instead he’d evaded with questions about what she was doing in Prague, where she’d been for the past few years, and how she’d snuck into his apartment a few weeks ago, bypassing his security system, all just to leave a little VTOL toy in his cereal box as a cute little surprise.

After the fall of Panchaea, she’d searched around the wreckage for Adam for over a week, but had found nothing. Not a scrap or trace of him. Pritchard had continued combing the world for any hint of Jensen’s global tag, but it had gone offline shortly after he had infiltrated the underwater facility, and never resurfaced. 

That had at least partially answered one question of his: Malik hadn’t saved him. And she wasn’t responsible for taking him to Alaska. He hadn’t realised how much he had needed to know she had nothing to do with that lost year, and the fresh round of forced augmentations, until the relief crashed over him as she'd confirmed what he'd hoped to be true, despite knowing he still didn't have any proof beyond her word.

“So how’d you find out I was alive?” he’d asked, and winced as his voice sounded like an interrogation. If she’d heard the slight accusation in the tone, she hadn’t seemed to mind. 

“Same way Sarif and Pritchard did, I guess. When you resurfaced in Detroit a year ago, looking for that job reference. Good work, by the way. Pritchard screamed down my Infolink that you were back from the dead, walking the halls, popping up out of nowhere, scaring the shit out of him.” 

She swished another bit of the Talisker in her mouth, and grimaced as the fiery liquid burned her throat. “Gotta say, I wish I’d been there when you told Sarif that you weren’t coming back just to work for him.”

He’d nearly growled aloud at that particularly shitty memory. He hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to walk the halls of Sarif Industries one last time, look into his old office, retrieve a few guns he’d stashed away in a few vents, and stalk David Sarif in his penthouse office like the ghost of Christmas past. All just to see his face when he merely politely requested a job reference, as required by his new boss, Director Jim Miller, at Task Force 29.

At the time, he'd thought it would take everything not to rip Sarif’s eyes out and stuff a nanoblade down his throat. After everything he’d seen at Panchaea, not to mention his own medical files, David Sarif would be damned lucky that all Jensen had come for was a job reference. But the way Sarif’s expression had turned from joyful and hopeful to suddenly fearful, then to outright depressed, he knew that Sarif was well aware of it. 

In the end, Sarif’s reaction had rather soured all of Jensen’s underlying furious righteous indignation. But it had been waning anyway. As he’d approached the penthouse office suite, and seen the empty desk where Anthea had once sat, he had realised he just wanted to get the hell away from Sarif, away from Detroit, away from all his memories of Megan, and to get back to the real hunt. Back to finding out who the hell the Illuminati were, and dragging them all into the light, preferably kicking and screaming all the way. 

Sarif had been, at best, a bishop in the game, and he’d been summarily taken off the board, his power utterly spent, his influence gone. There had been no point in rubbing it in. Just as there had been no way to go back in time and demand that his good arm and perfectly healthy legs be returned, or not be fucking cut off in the first place.

It was done. Over. So there was really nothing left to say.

His hands twitched. He poured more of the Talisker into both glasses, took a deep sip of his, and considered what he wanted to tell Faridah.

“So....you’re freelancing?” he asked for clarification.

“Mm…. something like that,” she murmured. His eyebrows lifted, and she ducked her head and laughed.

“Come on, Jensen. You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.” 

He tilted his head to one side, and gave her a pointed look. His shades were already off. She was totally unrepentant, a pretty little smirk on her slightly flushed face. He didn’t even need his CASIE mod to tell him she was slightly inebriated, probably open to more than just flirting, and that she was hiding something. Maybe something big.

Fuck it.

“Tai Yong picked up some of Sarif's work on some neural augs. Something they designed around sensation,” he began, and stopped. And then something unexpected happened. Something that hadn’t happened in a long, long time. 

Adam Jensen, former cop, ex-SWAT, Interpol agent, and big, badass cyborg… blushed. 

He hadn't known he could do that anymore. It just hadn’t happened in such a long time, he figured it was just another part of his humanity gone. And anyway, nothing had felt embarrassing or remotely funny enough to make him laugh hard enough to cause it to happen. He'd been plagued with it as a youth. He really had completely forgotten how it felt.

He was almost terrified as he felt his face become hot for the first time since he woke up after the initial attack at Sarif Industries. Not only did it feel totally foreign to his body after all this time, it was horrifying to feel so... embarrassed. He felt his breath quicken as he ducked his head to try to hide his emotions. His shades clicked down automatically. But then he felt the tips of his ears burn. He’d forgotten about that too. 

Faridah’s mouth, with its lush bottom lip and slightly thinner upper lip, accented so teasingly with that cute little mole, dropped open in surprise. 

“Are you… blushing?” she said breathlessly.

He said nothing. 

“Holy shit,” she crowed, and laughed for a second, before pouring even more of the Talisker into both of their glasses, and downing hers in a shot. 

“This is the best night ever. We’re so doing this job.”

He looked up, and scowled at her, even as his face continued to burn. She was wasting the good stuff, and she was laughing at him. She laughed some more, and the sound was like bells peeling in his living room. The joy on her face was infectious. He tried not to smile, but instinctively found he couldn’t help it. Like the yawning before, he was just drawn into her emotions. A tiny smile began to form around his mouth. He ruthlessly suppressed it, and turned it into a smirk. It would’ve worked better if his face wasn’t as red as a tomato, but he worked with what he had.

“Having fun?” he drawled.

“Immensely,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Oh God, your face. It’s so red…!” And that set off another round of laughter.

'So's yours,' he thought wryly, but didn't say a word as he rolled his eyes, politely sipped some more of his whisky, and waited for her to get herself under control. And for his face to go back to normal.

“Okay, okay,” she said after a moment. “So. Sensation. What kind. Are we talking about here.” She huffed again, giggling, and tried to look straight faced at him, but decided that it was too dangerous, and played with her glass instead. Little chuckles kept escaping, but she was mostly under control now.

“That’s just it,” he said. “No one knows. Sarif Industries and TYM were both working on it for years, but neither were anywhere close to production. Then Sarif went under, Tai Yong bought them out, and now rumours say Tai Yong have something close to final testing, but no one really knows for sure, or what it even does.”

“So why not just wait until it’s out there? Why not wait until it’s through the tests and the bugs are all ironed out?”

He gave her a look, and she said, “Yeah, I know, I know. The bugs are never totally out, so if you know a good programmer, and a good aug doctor…”

He looked at her sharply. She coughed once, looked away, and continued not to meet his eyes.

“You know Koller,” he stated. It wasn’t even a question now. She was in Prague, and the LIMB clinics were closed. She had neural augs. Even if she wasn’t working with the only underground genius aug doc he knew in Prague, which was rapidly seeming more and more likely, she might just need a tune-up now and then when she was in the area. But she was clearly in Prague for a reason.

She played with her glass again, not replying.

“You running with the Dvali, Mal?” 

She glared at him then. “Don’t insult me.”

“Then what?”

“Have you seen what it’s like out there, since the Incident? Or are you still just chasing shadows? Let’s just say that V knows people who need parts, Praxis, and Nu-poz, and we have an arrangement. And for now, that’s all you need to know.”

He ignored the jab.

“You don’t trust me?” he pressed. He knew what kind of trouble that kind of work could land her in. If the Dvali found out she and Koller were running some kind of good Samaritan business for augs under their noses, they’d take it out of his hide, and hers.

“I can take care of myself,” she replied evenly. 

He grunted, let it go for now, and pinned ‘spying on Koller and Malik’ as another item on his to-do list. He felt mildly guilty that it was filed under ‘kill the Illuminati’ and ‘find out who Janus is’. 

“So when we do this, V runs the tests and lets you know whether it’s safe?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he hedged, still unwilling to lie to her, but not willing to be totally honest either.

“Jensen, you motherfucker!” she shouted. He startled, and his shades instinctively clicked back open, his eyes flying wide. It was almost like having his mother shouting at him again, only she didn’t cuss like that.

“You can’t just strap that experimental shit into your system and hope for the best!” she launched into her lecture. He tried to head her off, but she was having none of it. “No, you listen to me, Jensen. I’ve had enough of your martyrdom shit to last a lifetime. If you do this, you do it with some protocol in place, or you find another pilot.”

“Since when do you get to tell me what I get to install in my body?” he snapped, his temper rising.

“Since you called me up for a ride,” she replied. “You want my bird, and a way in that won’t cost either of us our lives, you do this my way. Or you find some other way to fuck yourself up. Because I won’t be party to it.”

He blinked, and said, “You got a sneaky way into Tai Yong?”

She looked smug for a second, then it was all business again.

“Protocol, Jensen. You either find a way to do this right, or we don’t do it at all.”

He growled, and finally, grudgingly, acquiesced. 

“What do you have in mind?”

“Full medical scan before implantation. Koller does a full diagnostic on the aug. Pritchard does a full programming diagnostic for whatever nasties they’ve got in the code. And there will be nasties,” she glared at him. 

“You working with Francis too?” he questioned her. She ignored it, and continued.

“Tai Yong are sloppy as shit with their code. They do it on purpose to feed into their after-care programme. There's a reason they have all the credits, and Sarif folded. You buy their hardware on the cheap, even though their software's weak, and that’s where they get you long term. You have to rent their after-care programme to maintain, or all that hardware, however well designed, falls apart after the first software cycle ends. It’s just how the game works with them.”

He hadn’t known that, but then again, why would he? Until recently, he’d only ever been built with Sarif products. The phantom augs he’d received in Alaska had no build names attached, but they didn’t look like anything Koller or Sarif had ever seen before, and both were very familiar with everything on the open market, especially Tai Yong’s work. No wonder Sarif had hated their business model. It was the antithesis of everything he'd built.

Suddenly he was wary. What would this new tech do to him? To his Sarif augs? Could he trust this non-Sarif tech at all? His hands twitched.

She saw the shadow of doubt and fear in his face, and she nodded slowly, her face softening only slightly. She could see it was starting to sink in.

“Václav is a genius, especially with Tai Yong tech,” she said quietly. “He’s been tinkering with it since he was eight years old. And from what you’re saying, some of this tech will have Sarif’s marks in it. So integrating it with your system with something stable might actually be pretty simple,” she offered. 

He nodded, as he took another drink. That time it was a long, deep swallow. 

“After all the diagnostics are done, then we take a backup of your entire system,” she continued. “Physical where possible, software elsewhere. Everything. And I do mean, everything,” she said firmly. “As much as possible that we can backup with extra parts in case of any rogue virus, anything that can get attacked and destroyed, anything vulnerable. Your eyes in particular,” she says.

“My eyes?” he says, looking at her.

“You said it was a neural aug,” she replied. “So we’re going in through the ports behind your eyes.”

He blinked.

She sighed.

“You really haven’t thought through how this will actually work, have you?” 

“Well, both times it happened, I was unconscious,” he reminded her drily. “I didn’t ask for this.” 

“Welcome to body autonomy, Adam,” she said sarcastically. “This is what it’s like to choose. You get to find out exactly what happens, and you make the choices after all the information is laid out.”

“I thought you told me I had to do this, or you won’t fly me.”

“No, I said you’d have to find another pilot with another bird. Not that you weren’t free to figure out how to do this stupidly on your own.”

“Semantics.”

“Asshole.”

He grinned.

It took her breath away. She stopped ranting and looked at him in wonder. The Jensen she’d known at Sarif Industries after the attack had taken Megan had never smiled like that. Grim and determined, he’d been dry and sarcastic at the best of times, sardonic and downright vicious to Pritchard most of the time, and always coolly professional to Sarif until the day he quit. Sometimes he’d offered a kind of warm professionalism towards her, and a mild sort of almost-flirting, but she honestly could not recall a full toothy grin from him before now.

Maybe it was the whisky, or the late hour, or the fact she felt like her friend was really back. But she stopped feeling annoyed in that moment. Faridah Malik turned like a sunflower into the warmth of the sun, and just smiled at him, a genuine smile, full of joy and happiness. 

He felt it like a punch to his gut. It was like looking into a clear summer sky, full of fluffy white clouds that just beckoned you to fly a kite, or go for a swim, or do anything other than stay indoors all day. The kind of smile that promised only good things, only the best things, only the most wonderful adventures, the kind that dreams are made of.

“So,” he said, his voice rough and quiet. It sounded deeper than usual, and he ignored the longing he felt somewhere in his gut.

“So,” she replied evenly.

“We doing this?” he asked, meaning something. Mostly Hengsha. 

She held his gaze. “That’s up to you.”

A long moment passed between them. Neither moved. The smell of twenty-five-year old whisky permeated the room, dark and sweet, peaty and warm. A comforting smell that they’d shared before, in another life, on another continent.

“I want it. I’ll do it your way.”

“Sen…sational,” she drew out slowly, and hit him with that smile again. 

He nodded, and this time he didn’t blush. Instead, he leaned over, and poured her another drink.


	4. Chapter 4

‘The morning's going to be rough for Mal,’ he thought, but the Sentinel system had been clearing the alcohol within mere minutes every time he’d taken a drink.

It was just another double-edged sword in his arsenal. On the one hand, he could metabolise calories more quickly with alcohol than practically any other substance, save perhaps refined sugar. On the other, it sucked not to be able to get out of his head like any other person could – anyone without a Sentinel, anyway. 

It didn’t matter. In his line of work, being able to heal quickly from life-threatening injuries from as straightforward as a bullet wound to as nasty as a grenade was just too handy.

But on some nights, he really wished there was an off switch. Would it have been too much to ask Sarif to enable an option to get shitfaced sometimes, just like everybody else? To let the alcohol take away all his inhibitions, and end up in bed with a beautiful woman, even if it was a mistake, and pretend like it had never happened the next morning? Just like everybody else? 

Enforced sobriety was a pain in the ass.

Instead, he’d sobered up even as she’d gotten progressively inebriated, matching him sip for sip, then shot by shot. They’d gone through the Talisker alarmingly quickly. When she’d reached for one of his bottles of Hill’s Absinthe, tottering unsteadily on her feet, he’d decided to cut her off.

“Nuh uh,” he’d chided gently. “No mixing of the good stuffs.”

She’d wrinkled her nose. “Ew. I’d never.”

“Not even as chasers.”

“Meh. Party pooper.”

He’d merely shook his head, gently steered her to his bed, tucked her in, and turned out the light. She’d been snoring before he had made it back to his kitchen. He had work to do, and he sat at his dining table with his laptop, wandering through the darknet until the dawn broke a few hours later.

Faridah awoke to find him typing away at his laptop, clockwork pieces strewn across his dining table, and the remains of the previous night’s carnage still in evidence. A bowl of half-eaten cereal sat beside him, along with an empty coffee cup.

“Uh…. morning?” she ventured, her eyes squinting against the very slight sunlight streaming through the slats of his wooden blinds. “Please tell me you have painkillers. And coffee. And pastries.”

“In the bathroom, coffee’s on, and just Augmentchoos. Sorry.”

“Nhhgh….,” she moaned, as she wandered into his bathroom. He didn’t stand up to get her breakfast, absorbed in the darknet material he’d stumbled across over the hours she’d slept.

“Sorry I took your bed,” she said sheepishly, as she expertly rifled through his cupboards for a coffee mug, sugar, a bowl, and cutlery. He looked up noticing she didn’t hesitate for a moment as she picked through his stuff as though she had been living there for months, not having just arrived for the first time last night. 

‘Just how many times has Mal snooped in my apartment’, he thought, and a frown settled deep in his forehead.

She looked at him as she poured the milk into the bowl. She pointed a spoon at him. “Hey, I don’t recall insisting that I stay here, or that I take your bed. You could’ve put me on the couch. So why the face?”

He decided not to pursue the question for now. ‘If she wants to play spy versus spy, let the games begin’, he thought. ‘I need to find out what she’s doing with Koller anyway.’ He moved her pin up one level above ‘Find out who Janus is’, but still below ‘Kill the Illuminati'; it would be faster to figure her situation out anyway. He told himself it had nothing to do with easing his conscience, or the bit of guilt that had been niggling at him all night.

“Was digging into the situation at Tai Yong and Belltower, and what’s been going on at Hengsha since we were last there. It looks a lot like what’s been going on in Prague. Police lockdowns, early curfews for all augmented, open harassment of augmented on the streets. Ghettos for augmented have sprung up in the lower district, and the hatred and bigotry is spilling out onto TYM on the Pangu, even though they’re the ones keeping Hengsha rolling in credits,” he said. 

She nodded, and dug into her sugary breakfast. After a moment, she shook some painkillers into her palm, downed them with her coffee, and took a moment to savour the hot beverage. 

“Mmm,” she said, seemingly unconcerned with his summary. “Coffee good. Sugar good.”

“Focus, Mal,” he chided.

“You aren’t telling me anything I don’t already know,” she replied, continuing to dig into her breakfast. “I’ll let you know when you do. Keep talking.”

He looked mildly surprised, but then continued. 

“The only way into the upper level is through three gated security points, two of which are for naturals only. The third is like an EMP Fort Knox and about a hundred grenade launchers, all rolled into one. All three are manned by Tai Yong’s new security outfit, Auctoritas. They’re totally new to the city, and they stepped into the power vacuum left behind when Belltower and Tarvos were compromised. They’re rumoured to have connections to a group of wealthy Italian patrons of arts and science dating back to at least the sixteenth century, if you believe the darknet conspiracy theories.”

She nodded again, and kept eating, saying nothing. Irritated, he kept going.

“So, Auctoritas are going to be a problem. They're rumoured to fill their ranks with augmented, but they also pride themselves on discretion and focused discipline. They’re… Spartan, I guess is the feeling I get from the rumours about them over the darknet. They’re regimented, driven, and utterly devoted to this… family. Whoever they are. And they are fanatical about protecting the interests of this family, to the point of having been among the earliest adopters of augmentations back in the early 1990s, before neuroprosthesis rejection syndrome was fully understood, and Neuropozyne had been successfully synthesized. They were willing to take the risk to fulfil their oaths to the family, and damn the consequences.”

She eyed him over her coffee, and gave him a pointed look. He ignored it.

“That’s what I got so far. Got anything to share with the class?” he asked sarcastically.

“Oh, is that it?” she replied innocently. She refilled her cereal bowl.

“How are you not hungover,” he grumped.

“Who says I’m not?” she replied, still sunny as ever. He sighed, and watched her eat more of his Augmentchoos as he pretended to scroll through more data on his screen. After a moment, he closed his laptop, stood up, stretched, and sauntered over to her. She ate quietly, still not giving away a single clue.

“All right. I give up. What’ve I missed,” he said quietly, as humbly as he could manage. He poured himself a coffee, added milk, and two generous scoops of sugar.

“You really are a total sugar fiend,” she said. “Did you always have a high metabolism before the Sentinel?” 

“Yes, and no. I never let myself eat this much sugar before the augs. But without it, I run out of energy too quickly. And I’m told I get… cranky.”

She smirked. 

He glowered.

“All right,” she said, finishing her second cup of coffee. “So we don’t go in through the gates.”

“Already checked. The vents are too small. They upgraded or overhauled everything after my last visit. I guess I pissed off Zhao so much, she was willing to tear up her facility and change up all her vents than risk another security breach.”

“Who said anything about crawling around dusty vents?” she retorted. “That’s your bag, and I gotta say, I don’t love the claustrophobia. I prefer a more direct route.”

“And what’s that?” He’d been itching to hear her plans ever since she’d dropped that smug look on him last night.

“I make contact with my guy. We haggle, we agree a price, then we go pick up our order.”

He blinked.

“What?”

“You heard me. I go in through a back way with you, and we exchange the agreed credits for our order.”

“It can’t be that simple.”

“No," she snorted. "It really won’t be. But that’s why you’re coming with me.”

He stood staring at her, then nodded slowly.

“So, I’m the muscle, and you’re, what? A dealer? A middle man?” he offered.

“Not really,” she replied, still unwilling to clarify what she really did, or what her business arrangements in Tai Yong really amounted to. She ducked her head down, and played with the coffee mug. It was one of her tells, he remembered from the previous evening. Anytime she didn't want to talk, she'd focus on something in her hands. He filed that away for future reference. 

'Spy versus spy, round one,' he thought. He knew the CASIE mod was out; she always knew when someone used one, so he tried another tactic. 

He slowly moved closer until he leaned over her, taking advantage of his superior height. Without permission or warning, he eased himself forward, letting himself be drawn right into the cloud of her mussed hair. She’d let it grow slightly longer from the pixie cut she’d sported a few years ago when she’d been Sarif’s personal VTOL pilot. It fell just above her chin in subtle layers, gently framing her face, and curling ever so slightly in an unexpectedly soft way. He liked it. When it had been shorter, it had always been poker straight. He liked it that way too. He just liked her, he let himself admit to himself in this moment, as he ruthlessly invaded her space, and let his lips fall into the shimmering brown cloud of her hair, to speak into the shell of her perfect ear.

“Faridah, what exactly is it that you’re doing with Koller?” He let his voice sound deep as sin, smoky and hot. He inhaled the scent of her, letting his nose gently trace the cartilage, then rub just for a moment behind the lobe, and watched, hoped, for any telltale signs of a positive reaction.

He knew this tactic had worked on Megan many times before, when she would be so lost in her work that he'd finally resort to dirty talk and the deep timbre of his voice to pull her away and into his arms. Sometimes it was just to get her to eat, or to take a break, and walk Kubrick. Sometimes it was because he was lonely. Either way, he knew it boiled down to a cheap trick, using his voice this way, but at least his voice was all him, part of his inborn humanity, and had nothing to do with augmentations. 

He felt it. A surprised, sudden intake of her breath. The stiffening of her posture next to him. The ever so slight curving of her body towards his.

Then she turned her face towards his, meeting his eyes with her own, fathomless brown pools, and he wondered, not for the first time, what it was that she saw. A man’s eyes, or just another set of augs? He knew he couldn’t stand to see the pupils whirl and twist in the mirror when he brushed his teeth – thankfully still all his own – or when he shaved his face. 

“That … is on a need to know basis,” she said softly, turning her head slightly, challengingly. Moving just so that if he wanted to take something more, it was there on the table, for the asking. If he dared. She wasn’t backing down, nor was she falling for his tricks. 

He inclined his head in alignment with hers, not taking, still challenging her for more, following her response in cadence and graceful rhythm, unwilling to stop the chase. He wanted to know more, pushing her further with his response.

“And when will I need to know? When we’re in the middle of a negotiation somewhere in the heart of the Pangu, and it becomes clear I don’t know what the fuck is going on?”

She chuckled low in her throat, and he enjoyed the sound far too much.

‘She uses her voice as a weapon too’, he realised, his eyes widening slightly.

“Muscle doesn’t need to be smart, just big and carry a big ole’ gun,” she said, with a hint of a smile, not as blinding as the one she'd hit him with last night. “How ‘bout we play it like this. I’ll be the clever one. You be the big, scary, dumb one.”

The moment was broken. He rolled his eyes, and backed off.

She pushed away from the breakfast, and said, “I’m not doing the dishes. You’re still a total slob, Jensen. I’m having a shower, then we’re going. Wheels up at 0930.”

He grunted. Malik 1; Adam 0.


	5. Chapter 5

She stood under the hot, hard spray of Jensen’s shower, and tried to get her breathing under control. 

‘Damn him,’ Malik thought as she clenched her fist into the tile next to the shower unit. The hot water scalded the last of the headache from the back of her eyes, but did nothing to soothe the tension in her mind.

Ever since Pritchard had screeched into her Infolink that Adam was alive, she had wondered if their paths would cross again. She had mourned him twice now, once for the man he’d been before his augmentation, and once more, when she, Pritchard, and Sarif had all been forced to conclude that their shadowy, one-man army had finally managed to punch his own ticket. 

She’d grieved for the relationship she’d grown to have with him, even if it had only progressed to one with half-flirting responses, lingering glances, and the occasional late night drinking some of his good stuff. From the beginning, she had known she couldn’t hold a candle to the torch he carried for his ex, Dr Megan Reed. Then Reed had died while under his watch, and Malik had been no fool. Competing with a living ex with years of baggage between them would have been difficult at the best of times. An ex-lover murdered before his eyes was something else entirely for a former detective. 

She saw the obsession form before he did. She knew the signs, and had seen him approach Cassandra Reed without hesitation. Adam Jensen had been a born gumshoe. His detective’s heart had never died, or been replaced by some kind of weak security subroutine. Even if the only shred of evidence had been the softest whisper of a sigh, he would still be compelled to make every attempt to track down the mouth responsible, and make it scream. 

Which brought her to last night and this morning. Jensen absolutely could not find out what she was doing with Koller and Pritchard. 

She sighed and reached for Adam’s bottle of shampoo, and wrinkled her nose in distaste. She couldn’t read the Czech, but it seemed to be some kind of generic 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner, which was just so typical, and would make her hair fluff up like crazy in the Shanghai humidity. Having no other option, she washed her hair, and winced as it caught in tangles from her unsettled sleep.

‘The Corinthian was very clear,’ she reminded herself. ‘If he finds out anyone suspects, they will be eliminated, my access to intel restricted, and Koller and Pritchard both taken in for questioning. And not the nice kind of chat over coffee and cake.’ 

She shuddered involuntarily, and touched her right hip and the small of her back. Her left arm covered her breasts. The reddened scars were raised like rivulets across her skin, as though they were tributaries of a river system, or a network of thickened coral branches, which eventually centred across her right hip, and into the small of her back, where they connected into a very special augmentation.

With trembling fingers, she touched the port at the bottom of her spine, where the jack was inserted directly into her spinal cord. When she was within distance to the Corinthian, it would automatically remotely connect to a multitool specially programmed for his particular style of torture. A very special port, which could enable him to reroute pain throughout her nervous system. He was the judge, jury, and might be the executioner, if she failed him. He would pick where and how to torture her whenever he decided her runs hadn’t produced the quality and quantity of whatever he had demanded.

With a single flick, pain would emanate from anywhere in her body that he would desire, and she would have no warning at all. Though it hadn’t happened yet, she had begun to live in fear that he could materialise out of thin air and start a round of torture; the port gave no warning when it connected to its master. And unlike other forms of more traditional torture, there was no forewarning where the blow might land, and therefore where the pain might start. And he was a sadist. He could be frantic one moment, moving his fingertip around the multitool screen like an incensed toddler with a broken toy, or he could go very, very slowly. 

It even allowed for depth control, she thought, as she remembered a particularly bad session, after a poor run at an abandoned LIMB warehouse outside of Warsaw. The return on the invested fuel, stun guns, EMP sniper equipment, and a new TITAN shield and glass cloak for her had only resulted a giant fuck up that she still hadn’t unravelled. The best she could guess was that someone, somewhere, in her network had tipped her off, maybe for more Nu-Poz, maybe for some credits. It was bad all over, and people were getting desperate. Either way, the warehouse was empty, save for a number of box units, trip mines, and the overall feeling that someone, somewhere, was laughing his or her ass off at her.

The Corinthian hadn’t been pleased. When she’d met him at the rendezvous, he’d hurled insults at her for her failure, even as she shouted back that something had gone wrong with his intel. He had hit her across the jaw with a powerful right hook, foregoing his little torture device for a more traditional beating this time. His red hair seemed the wash out under the purpling rage of his face. His huge upper body and pistoning legs, augmented for Soviet warfare, seemed to gain in size as he towered over her. His fists clenched and opened, and clenched again. The black optics installed within his face whirled and twisted, but without sclera, it was difficult to make out any kind of human expression. He was simply an enraged machine with no humanity left, and in her own rage and fear, she couldn’t help but laugh a little.

“And he huffed, and he puffed, and he blowed her house down,” she coughed, as she laughed into the ground, holding her mouth gently as she spat blood into the basement of the Oslo apartment.

“Where is the pen drive,” he ground out through metal teeth. She wondered again, in her hysteria and anger, if he had those specially moulded for his skull, or if they came in standard sizes, like fingers and eyeballs. Did he have to brush them? Soak them like her great-grandparents had with their dentures?

“I told you,” she said as carefully as she could around her aching jaw. “There were box units and droids. I took them out.” Along with the rest of the building. There had been nothing left by the time she'd bugged out, leaving the warehouse a pile of burning rubble.

“And you didn’t stop to check the offices!”

“I was a little busy saving my life!”

“Your life means nothing to us!” he roared, and too late, she realised his right hand had gone into his pocket, finding his little electronic toy. 

“No!” she cried out, jumping forward to stop him. But it was too late. His face had transformed into ugly triumph, one of total sadistic control. And her hip began to fry.

She remembered white hot heat and falling over, suddenly unable to control her body. The spasms of pain in her thigh and calf muscle as her right leg wouldn’t bear her weight anymore. He stood over her as she screamed, her legs becoming rigid as he worked his toy back and forth, enjoying her pain.

“All you had to do was retrieve a fucking pen drive, Blackbird,” he mocked, as he cranked up the pain harder and higher. She screamed again as her leg locked into rigid cramps, her toes trying to press against her boots in directions they couldn’t maintain. She had landed on her left hip, the one that had been injured in the Hengsha crash with Jensen. It felt like forever ago, a time when things had been much simpler.

“I… tried!” she huffed, as she tried to tell her brain that this was just pain, and she could deal with pain. She tried breathing deeply and exhaling slowly, forcing herself not to hyperventilate, trying not to give into the Corinthian’s game. 

“By blowing up the warehouse? That’s not exactly trying,” he drolled. He kicked her hip hard, but as it was so rigid, locked in its pain, it barely seemed to make a dent in her. She gritted her teeth, focusing on breathing, and not giving him anything else to work with.

“You think you can master pain by deep breathing,” he mused, and his voice sounded almost sad. “I remember those days. That was a long time ago, for me. You’ll remember these days too, with fondness. Because now, we’re going to play with this button.”

She looked up sharply. He hovered a meaty thumb over the hated, altered multitool, but she couldn’t see what he was looking at from where she lay below him.

He pressed the button.

She saw blue lightning arc around her for an endless heartbeat, which seemed to stretch out for eternity in a rictus of agony that she had never thought possible for a human being to feel, let alone survive. Her body was on fire. Then, blessedly, she passed into unconsciousness.

A knock on the bathroom door startled her. She jumped and nearly slipped on the tiles under her feet. 

“Mal,” the deep voice shouted through the sound of the shower. “You drowning? You said 0930, and it’s nearly 10.”

She shouted back, unexpectedly hoarse, “Uh, sorry about that. Wheels up at half past. Guess I was more hungover than I thought!”

She didn’t hear anything more, and she figured he’d just walked away. She quickly shut off the shower, grabbed one of Jensen’s soft grey towels, and quickly dried off.

She fixedly did not look at the scars across her right hip, or how it snaked across her belly and breasts.

She didn’t think about how she didn’t have a right nipple anymore, just a simple line where Koller had neatened off the burned, blackened end, where the lightning arc had damaged the delicate skin to the point of third degree burns that simply would not heal.

She refused to think about anything other than the mission. She reviewed her priorities.

Spy for or outright steal information for the Juggernaut Collective. 

Keep them away from Adam Jensen. 

Steal whatever augs and Neuropozene she could while she was on a mission. 

Keep Koller, her genius aug doctor, safely ignorant. 

Keep Pritchard, the wily little snake, totally in the dark.

And somehow, keep them all alive.

And if that meant treating Jensen like shit to throw him off the scent, she would be the biggest bitch he had ever seen. 

She put her clothes back on, pulled her sunny disposition back around her like a TITAN shield, and walked back into the apartment.

“Ready?” Jensen asked from the living room. He was already dressed in his characteristic black tactical gear, complete with his trench coat. He looked pissed off. 

“Got your grenade launcher, Paolo?” she said with a sweet smile. 

“Paolo?” he grunted.

“Gotta call you something, and it can’t be Jensen. You look like a Paolo to me.”

“No. Not Paolo.”

“George?”

“No.”

“Edward?”

He just glowered.

She sighed dramatically, as she gathered her overnight bag and flight jacket. They headed towards his door.

“What do you go by?” he asked.

“Blackbird,” she said without hesitation.

He startled, not expecting an honest response from her. But from her body language and demeanour, he could tell it was true. 

Malik 1; Adam 1.

“Blackbird, huh?” he said quietly. “Why Blackbird?” They walked quickly along the streets of Prague, Mal heading towards an abandoned football pitch on the southwest edge of his neighbourhood. 

“Because I liked reading old twentieth century comic books when I was a kid. My mom had a whole bunch of them. The X-Men had the best plane,” she replied with a faint blush. “They called it the Blackbird.”

“Never read it,” he replied.

“Philistine. In fact, that’s going to be your name now. You can go by Phil.”

“No.”

“Yes. You can only change it after you read some proper literature.”

He rolled his eyes, but she caught the tiny smile lurking around his mouth. He ruthlessly suppressed it before she could crow victory. She came to the abandoned football pitch, and gently opened the rusted gate. It made a loud protesting shriek of metal as they opened and closed it, disturbing the silence of the otherwise quiet morning. 

The pitch had once been used by children in the area and people walking dogs, but these days it laid abandoned and filled with the detritus of a city that was rapidly becoming rotten with decay and neglect. Abandoned tents and makeshift shelters lay in ruined piles, along with tossed over couches and open steel barrels. No people, dead or otherwise, appeared to be living in the pitch now, but that might have been a recent development. Adam saw a small pink teddy bear lying face-down in the mud next to a dirty, child-sized sleeping bag, and wondered if the child was now in Golem City, or worse. His mood darkened.

“Here she is,” Malik said, her voice very quiet. The atmosphere in the pitch had gotten to her too.

He glanced at the VTOL and suppressed the urge to react. He took it in for a moment, and refused to give Malik the reaction she so obviously wanted.

He climbed into the plane without another word. 

It was David Sarif’s private aircraft, carbon black and armour plated, with a very small golden triangle detail ringed around the edge of the nose of the plane. Subtle, especially by Sarif standards, which had fairly dripped with the need for ostentatious gold on practically every edge. How she got it, he had no clue, but to ask was to forfeit a point. He'd have to figure it out on his own. 

The most obvious option was that she had stolen it, but it didn't fit her MO. She wouldn't burn bridges if she didn't absolutely have to, and Sarif had done nothing outright to her to warrant it. The other option was to have purchased it from Sarif on the cheap, before his company folded, to avoid it going to Tai Yong. The more he thought about it, the more that fit. The idea of his beloved personal VTOL, crafted with some of his own personal touches, going to his personal enemy, would have hurt more than knowing Malik would gut the interior like a fish.

Inside the plane, everything was different to what Jensen remembered, and exactly as he had expected. Gone were the reclining leather seats, the built-in champagne buckets, and the thick, luxurious carpet. Malik had remodelled everything. She’d replaced the creamy walls with their carved wooden details with vertical gun racks, storage compartments, and a modular seating and flooring system. Not a hint of gold or oak appeared anywhere that he could see. It was utilitarian and deadly serious. 

“What'd you name her,” he asked softly, after he had stored his gear. Sarif had never given her a name, as far as he was aware. Just the giant gold S-001 on the sides, now long gone. He watched as Malik arranged their seats. After moving a new co-pilot seat for him, she gestured for him to sit down. He strapped himself into the five-point harness as she did the same in the pilot seat, handing him a headset wordlessly as she placed hers on.

She flicked switches as she ignored his question, going through the take-off process, the sequence almost second nature to her. She forced herself to concentrate. The most easily avoided mistakes were always made at take-off or landing, she reminded herself, and she held a finger up to Jensen as she went through pre-flight checks again, this time giving it her full attention.

As they lifted off into the weak winter sunlight, she said, “Nighthawk. After the nightjars of my mother’s homeland, and one of her favorite Marvel comic characters.”

“Still haven’t read it.” 

“Well, that’s a shame, Phil.”

He grumbled.

Malik 2; Adam 1.


	6. Chapter 6

They didn't speak much over the flight. She had never been one for chatting while flying, and he seemed content to hold the silence with her. She wasn't giving him anything, and all his questions felt like interrogation. So the silence stretched over the miles of clouds below them as they flew from Prague towards Shanghai.

The Nighthawk flew like a whisper as Malik began to descend. At a signal on her screen, she quietly punched in her authorisation for an outrageous amount of credits. A landing code appeared, and she took note of it instantly in her mind. It was for the rendezvous point on Manshan, a tiny island on Taihu Lake, just to the west of Shanghai. The little island was far enough away from Hengsha not to draw any attention from Auctoritas, but close enough that she and her contact could agree on its suitability as a neutral location. 

Over the last fifty years, climate change and the increased pressures of suburban sprawl had taken its toll on the lake and its many islands. Manshan, one of the smallest and most remote of the islands, had become badly affected by seasonal flooding due to habitat loss. The ancient woodland and marshy vegetation had thinned around the lake, which had experienced ever increasing levels of pollution as Shanghai had relentlessly continued to expand outwards. It all culminated in unpredictable flooding patterns around the lake, complete with giant seiche waves and seasonal tides. Manshan's small size and limited economic value had eventually convinced the Chinese authorities to evacuate the little community that had been struggling for decades to capture the ever-waning tourist market, and surrender the island to the elements. 

Seemingly overnight, someone or some group known as The Management had taken over the island. Manshan was open for business for people like the Juggernaut Collective, Harvesters, freelance mercenaries, and all manner of shady underground organisations. It had become the perfect location for hiding and smuggling in close proximity to Hengsha, and by extension, the Pangu. And no one wanted to fuck that up by alerting the Chinese authorities, or worse, the security teams hired out by TYM, the latest to date being Auctoritas. 

It was strictly neutral ground for even the nastiest of criminals. Mercs would pay high prices to temporarily stash their ill-gotten cargo, and were welcome to do so as long as they didn’t attempt to steal anyone else’s cargo, or set off anyone’s alarmed goods. VTOL pilots could land with impunity as long as they possessed the correct codes; pilots who approached the coordinates would be prompted by island’s AI system for a randomised amount of credits. No credits, no landing code. Pilots who tried to land anyway would experience the full wrath of the island's AI, which would unleash box units, remote droids, EMP rockets, and viruses to the onboard systems to take them out of the sky. If by some miracle the pilot survived, they were at minimum blacklisted from the island; at worst, they became a legitimate target.

Sometimes the randomisation algorithm in the AI would appear to be merciful, and a pilot would receive the landing code for the price of a cup of coffee; other times, the cost might outweigh the price of the cargo, fuel, and that run's profit margin. Such was the price for neutral territory. 

There was only one cardinal rule, and it was extremely simple: anyone who visited the island, however short the stay, was responsible for topping up the basic supply list. Nailed to the wall next to the refrigerator was an old-fashioned piece of lined paper onto which was written in twentieth century English and Chinese calligraphy the following items: booze, coffee, tea, drinking water, toilet paper, dried packets of noodles, and fuel canisters for the heating and cooling generator. The paper was simply signed ‘The Management’, inside a plain wooden frame, complete with glass. Manshan might be a haven for the lawless, but everyone needed to wipe their ass from time to time. 

Legend had it that years ago, when the island had first begun being used as a drop-off point for merc cargo and the occasional overnight stop, The Management had hunted down a Harvester named Jack ‘The Saw’ Hargrave for cleaning out the entire kitchen without leaving so much as a packet of soy sauce. The next thing anyone had heard about Jack, he’d been for sale in the used parts section of the darknet equivalent of an online aug flea market. His custom-made interchangeable right hand-to-hacksaw had been easy to recognise. Word spread like lightning through the usual back channels: The Management would not tolerate anyone fucking with the supplies on Manshan. 

These days, the island's accommodation had been upgraded from a barely serviceable shack in the woods covering most of the grounds to a downright hospitable log cabin, carefully disguised but with a pitched roof covered with solar cells to catch precious rays for electricity. The upstairs area contained two suites of bedrooms connected with small bathrooms complete with a tub and overhead shower unit. The downstairs was a simple affair with a utilitarian stainless-steel kitchen, a heavy oak table off to one side, and ports throughout the walls for various electrical units. Various storage units lined the walls, each of which bore eReaders with various encrypted notes requiring pen drives or other forms of electronic authentication unlocking devices. There were no rugs, carpets, or extraneous furniture. Folding chairs were stacked against one wall, ready for deployment, but there were no couches or armchairs. It was welcoming, but not too cozy. It was also clean, but Malik had never seen an actual cleaning crew.

As long as the Nighthawk’s cloaking device and radar-jammer stayed one step ahead of the ever-evolving tech installed so close to the Pangu, it was the ideal meeting place for Malik and her TYM contact. As Mal touched her bird onto the small landing zone, she quickly typed in her landing sequence code against the detonation countdown that had appeared on the screen in front of her.

“Problem?” Jensen murmured next to her.

“No,” she replied tersely as she finished the complicated keystrokes.

The countdown switched from an ominous red decreasing numbers to an obnoxiously happy, yellow smiley-face. ‘The Management’s idea of a welcome wagon,’ Malik thought, grumbling.

“Hi Amanda,” Malik said aloud.

“Welcome back, Blackbird,” said a disembodied female voice into the quiet of the VTOL. Jensen looked startled for a moment, but said nothing. 

“Amanda, meet Phil. Phil, this is the Manshan Island AI. We call her Amanda.”

“Hello, Phil,” said the disembodied voice again, in the same tone. “Welcome to Manshan. Have you brought your own toilet paper?”

Jensen’s eyebrows lifted as he glanced at Malik. She sighed. “It’s… a thing here. I’ve brought the required supplies, Amanda.”

“Excellent. Room 1 is prepared. Your guest has arrived, and is staying in Room 3.”

Malik looked up sharply. “Shu is here already?”

“Yes. He arrived one hour and twenty-two minutes and forty-three seconds before the Nighthawk touched my shore.”

Malik swore softly.

“Problem?” Jensen asked again. Malik looked up at him, and said, “Potentially. We’ll just have to wing it. Follow my lead. Don’t ask questions, and don’t interrupt. You’re my muscle, but not my bodyguard. Do you understand?” 

Jensen’s body fairly radiated disapproval, but he nodded once.

“Am I treating this guy as hostile or not,” he asked with a cold voice.

“We won’t know until we get in there. Just follow my lead. Don’t use lethal force unless I authorise it. I want to keep him alive if I can. But if that isn’t possible, it has to look like someone other than an aug took him out.” 

She stared hard into his face. His shades were down, covering his eyes. It was difficult to read any emotion on his face in this moment, but she could feel his mind going over the possibilities, discarding scenarios one by one. It hurt to see him look at her with that expression of disapproval and coldness on his face, but she steeled herself against it. 

“We’re here to negotiate for the aug you want, along with the rest of my order, and to get passage into the Pangu without going through the Discordia Gate,” she said firmly. 

“Is that what they call it?” he said. “Auctoritas aren’t very imaginative, are they?”

“Imaginative enough,” she replied grimly. “You weren’t wrong about the grenade launchers and the EMPs. It’s built like a fortress. Shu is our best way around it, but his price is usually pretty high. So keep your mouth shut, and don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”

She turned to walk away, but he pulled her arm back towards him, and ignored her wince. His shades clicked open. He needed to see her eyes. His face was very close to hers, and his voice was low.

“Why are you working with someone like this,” he asked her. “Who is it you’re working for? There has to be another way. We don’t have to do it like this---”

“There’s no time for this. I’m going on this run, with or without you. Your option is to come with me and get your aug, or find another way. It’s up to you. No one’s forcing you. But if you come with me, you have to do it my way.” 

She held his eyes with her own. He searched hers for a long, endless moment. He didn’t know what he was seeking, but he didn’t need his CASIE aug to tell him what his gut instincts had always told him about Faridah Malik.

She wasn’t lying to him. He could tell that her mission had been planned weeks in advance. His need for his sensitivity aug had just slotted in with her timing. 

That was a curious thing though. How did all of this just happen to coincide? Was it really just a coincidence, or something more? The fact this was all happening at the same time without interfering with her plans told him that it was possible that she did this sort of thing all the time. Maybe acquiring extra augs for people in need was just an extracurricular activity to her main mission, whatever that was. That might mean her involvement Koller and any good Samaritan activities was just a side gig. That made more sense to him, and he decided to put a question mark next to that point in his mind.

But it gave him no further information about her real purpose here. Frustrated at the dead end, he nodded, and let her arm go. 

“Let’s go, Blackbird,” he said tersely. 

“Phil,” she said in reply, pointing up in the air, reminding him of the ever-present AI. She flicked open a cargo container near her foot and pulled out a large duffel bag. Handing it to Jensen, she walked out of her plane and into the brilliant sunshine. His shades clicked shut, and he walked out behind her, his trenchcoat flaring in the wind. 

Shu met them at the doorway to the cabin, where it stood just a short walk from the landing area on the north side of the tiny island. Malik didn’t bother to look behind her as Amanda engaged the cloaking device over the landing strip. She never liked witnessing her precious Nighthawk disappear from her sight, no matter how necessary it would be to any passing drones.

“Blackbird!” the short Chinese man greeted her from the steps of the cabin, his light grey hair glimmering weakly in the sunlight. His dark brown eyes under his rimless steel frame glasses were happily twinkling, and his slightly crooked teeth glimmered as he smiled at her. He wore dark brown trousers and a fine silk embroidered shirt, under which he wore a lightweight undershirt. His shoes were highly polished brown leather, and his fingernails were trimmed very short. His face was lightly lined with some advanced years. He could have been as old as sixty or as young as forty; if he was augmented, the tech was extremely subtle.

“Shu,” she said evenly. “We agreed we would meet tomorrow.”

“Your beauty had me impatient!” the older man replied in perfect English, then he switched into flawless Cantonese. “And I would not ask you to ship tangerines.”

“But I’m not interested in fruit anyway,” she replied in kind to the old proverb with a smile that did not reach her eyes. She switched to English and gestured behind him. “Shall we?”

He nodded at Jensen behind her, and his eyes hardened, even as his grin remained fixed upon his face. “No. I do not recognise your new companion. Is it not customary for introductions to be offered?” His eyes were shrewd as he held out his left hand to Jensen, who remained behind Malik, holding the duffel bag, and not moving forward to take the man’s hand. He said nothing, only continued to assess the man, following Malik’s instructions to the letter. Something wasn’t right about Shu, but he couldn’t place what it was.

“He’s one of mine. That’s all you need to know,” Malik said. “Now please. I’m hungry and thirsty. I’d like something to eat before we start negotiations.”

Shu stared at Jensen a little longer before returning his gaze to Mal. He seemed to falter a moment, then pulled his hand back and said too brightly, “Of course. Please. Come in. I hope you brought your own toilet paper?”

Jensen snorted quietly under his breath and rolled his eyes. It was going to be a long afternoon.


	7. Chapter 7

Shu walked to the kitchen, and placing his hands into a cupboard, withdrew three small, dark grey Japanese style tea cups without handles and two small teapots. He removed a small serving tray from beside the microwave, then arranged all of the dishes on it in a practiced series of motions. Malik busied herself with removing a third steel folding chair from the wall across the door, near the plain wooden staircase, and placing it next to her chair at the table. Only two chairs had been waiting. Shu had not been expecting anyone else.

Jensen watched as Shu situated himself at the table with the tray, but he made no move to sit with the man. Malik wandered over to the kitchen and withdrew a single old-fashioned campfire kettle, and placed it on the gas burner. She called over to Jensen. 

“Bring the bag.” He didn’t like turning his back even slightly away from Mal’s contact, but her body language was merely tense, not hostile. Shu seemed content to wait on them, so Jensen followed her lead. 

He brought the large duffel bag over to her, and she gestured for him to place it on the ground. She quickly unzipped it, then brought out one of two gallons of drinking water.

“We aren’t staying long,” she said quietly. “And there’s more water on the Nighthawk if we need it. Leave one of the gallons next to the fridge unopened.”

He carried the water over and noticed another three gallons next to the fridge, all unopened. When he placed the gallon down, a little chime sounded, and the disembodied voice of the AI said, “Thank you Phil. Thank you Blackbird. Your contribution is registered.” 

He blinked, but said nothing in reply, only returned to Malik as she continued to hand out the supplies one by one, placing them in cupboards or directing him to specified locations throughout the cabin. Each time they deposited an item, Amanda acknowledged it, and it began to take on a ritual-like feel as food, drink, fuel, and the much-emphasized toilet roll was added to their respective stashes. Shu sat patiently, looking straight ahead, never offering a comment or complaint. Either he was the world’s most patient man, or something was seriously off about him.

Finally, Malik sighed, and said, “I’ll make some tea. Do you want instant coffee? If someone’s left some sugar and long-life milk, you might be in luck. Otherwise, it’ll have to be black.”

He grimaced. “I’ll take some of the black tea, with any sugar you can find.”

She smiled, and opened her packs of tea and water. She set the kettle to boil and handed him two single serve bags of tea – one filled with green tea, one filled with black – and gestured towards the table. 

“Take it to the teapots. I’ll bring the water and sugar.” Her eyes flickered to him, and he caught the warning in her face. ‘Don’t ask questions, and don’t make this harder than it has to be,’ he remembered. He nodded, but felt like scowling. This wasn’t his first rodeo.

He returned to the table and sat down, looking into Shu’s eyes. At first, they didn’t seem to be focused on anything in particular, as though he was asleep with his eyes open, or meditating without blinking. It was unsettling as hell. Then in a heartbeat, he seemed to come awake, and Jensen had to struggle to keep his face neutral. Had Shu actually been asleep while awake? Or in some kind of fugue state?

“Thank you for the tea,” Shu said, and held his left hand out for Jensen to drop the green tea bag into it. The centre of his palm contained a perfectly round, bright red circle, and it looked like a tattoo, or a birth mark. He tried not to be caught staring, but the hesitation in dropping the tea bag gave him away. Shu smiled knowingly, but did not volunteer any information. His crooked teeth invited questions, but Jensen simply let the bag drop. Shu held his hand out for a moment longer, then went about the business of opening his tea pot and dropping the bag of green tea in. 

Shu 1; Phil 0.

“How long have you been working for the Blackbird?” Shu asked casually, as Malik walked over with the steaming kettle. She placed four packets of sugar onto the table next to Jensen, and then poured boiling water into both teapots. She didn’t respond to Shu as she returned the kettle to the stove.

Jensen said nothing, and merely replaced the lid to his pot, and then sat back to glare at Shu from behind his lenses.

“I’ve never seen her with anyone before,” Shu continued, completely unperturbed. He began pouring his tea, and without hesitation, sipped his little thickly mottled grey cup. If the liquid burned his lips or tongue, he did not seem to notice. “Are you her lover?” he asked with a cheeky grin.

Jensen’s face was like stone, and he took full advantage of his ability to project insolence and disdain in a very slow angling of his head that seemed to say, ‘Just how stupid are you?’ in flashing neon.

Shu chuckled. “I see.” He drank his tea, and seemed to enjoy it very much as Malik sat down.

“Charming as ever, Shu,” Malik drawled. “I haven’t had my noodles yet, and you’re already pissing people off.”

“So, is he a friend?” Shu said, glancing over at her, without seeming to take his eyes from Jensen. 

“I said he’s one of mine,” she replied. “Ergo.”

“And if he is what I want?” he asked evenly. Jensen credited himself a point for not reacting in the slightest.

“He’s not for sale,” she replied in the same tone. “And I’ve told you before, Shu. I don’t deal in slaves. Never have, and never will.”

“Pity,” he said, turning his head slightly, finally facing Malik completely, ignoring Jensen entirely. “He would fetch such a good price in Shanghai. But if he’s not a slave, then what is he?”

Jensen gritted his teeth, and thought he felt an old filling grinding into a molar with the effort it took not to reply or wipe the smirk off Shu’s face. His nanoblade would work quite well. He wouldn’t waste any ammunition on this scumbag.

“He’s one of mine,” she replied firmly, without malice or heat, but with a steel core of conviction that brooked no argument or compromise. “And you will treat us both with respect, or this negotiation is over, and I will take my business elsewhere. Tung-mei, perhaps. Or Jinhai.”

“No, Blackbird.” The tone was gently chiding, but there was just a subtle hint of irritation in the current between them for the first time. “You deal with me, and only me. That is our agreement, and that is our bargain.”

“Then stop being an asshole.”

A beat. They glared at each other, and the tension in the room felt coarse, thick, and nasty. Shu’s real personality seemed to glimmer from behind his thin veneer, and Jensen could see that it was full of hatred for Malik. Whatever she might have done to earn that emotion, he couldn’t begin to unravel, but the real Shu he glimpsed in that moment was as clear as the full moon peeking out from behind a fast-moving cloud on an otherwise dark, featureless night sky. Then it was gone, and the false friendliness was back; Shu smiled his crooked grin again, and nodded slightly.

“My apologies, my dearest Blackbird,” he said solicitously. 

“Of course,” she replied, in precisely the same tone. Jensen couldn’t help but notice she neither accepted his apology, nor acknowledged that it was even an apology to begin with.

“What services do you require of your humble servant,” he continued, in a voice so oily it might have been dripping with rancid, liquified grease.

“The usual seven cases of Neuropozyne, painkillers, and hypostims. Arms and legs, some inclusive of hips and pelvic girdles. Both sexes, various heights and ages. I have a list. There are a few for children under the age of ten, so we’ll need the newest tissue extenders - the ones that can ‘grow’ as they grow into adolescence. Eyes, at least three neural augs, a CASIE, some of the new cochlear implants – the hidden internal ones – and some of the glass shields. There’s also one special order for something experimental. If you don’t have it, I will consider you unable to fulfil this order in its entirety, and be in breach of our contract. And then I will go to Tung-mei and Jinhai.” 

She reached into the pocket of her flight jacket and pulled out a small eReader. She quickly keyed in a code to unlock it, then slid it across the table to him. He plucked it up with his left hand to scan it over as she casually picked up her teapot. She poured into Jensen’s cup first, carefully not looking into his face, then poured her own cup of tea. He doctored his tiny cup with all four packets of sugar. His hands did not shake at all. They drank their tea while Shu perused her order, and waited for the hammer to fall. It did not take long.

“How do you know about the Senso aug?” Shu asked sharply. “It couldn’t have been those fools Tung-mei or Jinhai. Was it Longwei? Baozhai? Tell me!” He dropped the eReader and beat the table with his left fist, causing the teapots to rattle.

Malik said nothing, only sipped her tea contentedly, waiting for Shu to get his temper under control. After a moment, the older man seemed to realize his outburst, and pulled himself together visibly. His hand shaking, he looked at her again, and this time with reappraising eyes.

'Blackbird 1; Shu 1; Phil 1,' thought Jensen.

“I do not know who has been talking, but they will pay for this indiscretion. And you, Blackbird. This will cost you much more than before,” he said slowly. “The Senso is not yet ready.”

“I don’t care,” Malik said blandly.

Shu sucked at his crooked teeth. It was like watching an angry predator considering whether its prey was worth the effort, or if a hungry belly was just the price of doing business today.

“It is… much harder to reach this laboratory. It is much deeper in the Pangu. The other augs are mere trinkets compared to this.”

Malik looked at him for a long moment. She seemed to weigh her thoughts very carefully. Jensen stared at her, wondering what she was thinking. He was on the brink of breaking the silence, when she placed her teacup down on the table very gently, and looked into Shu’s face.

“Okay, Shu. I’ll bite. Why?”

He sighed deeply, closing his eyes like he was savouring a fine wine, or biting into a meal after having been denied for so long. 

“Finally, you ask a question, but you know it is the wrong one. You must ask yourself: how deeply do you want this?”

She stared at him, and without a word, she pulled her hands towards her flight jacket. Casually, as though she did this every day, she unzipped it and shrugged it off, letting it rest against the back of her chair. Then she quickly pulled off the lightweight moisture-wicking long-sleeve top she had been wearing underneath the jacket, and simply dropped it to the floor. She sat across from Shu in a sports bra, her arms, collar bones, and belly bare. She very carefully did not look at Jensen, sitting less than a foot away to her left.

Jensen was horrified and completely confused. Under his shades, his eyes were wide with shock and not a small amount of anger. He had sparred with Malik years ago, before his augmentations. He remembered seeing her clad in a sports bra and pair of jogging trousers. He remembered very clearly that Faridah Malik had subtle neural augmentations to aid her piloting skills, and nothing else. 

Times had clearly changed.

His neural hub took in the pattern of scarring that snaked from the right side of her hip to under her ribcage, where it disappeared under the edge of her sports bra. A complex pattern of scars that looked like branding, or perhaps electrical shock? Had this happened at Hengsha? He wasn’t certain. He hadn’t seen her injuries after they had returned from that trip, and he’d been off to Panchaea almost immediately after. Was this the result of the crash, or did it happen after?

At both sides of her collarbones, round carbon ports now appeared, very similar to his own, but smaller, in keeping with her slighter frame. He would bet all his credits that she had another pair on the wings of her shoulders, and tracing down her spinal cord, all to anchor what had to be a TITAN shield and glass cloaking system. He had only ever seen those carbon ports on his own body, and the placement was unmistakeable. The augs required implantation through the spine and across the collarbones to reduce shock to the torso when the augmentation was in action, but she definitely had not possessed either aug when she was piloting for Sarif Industries. 

The inside of the elbow of her right arm contained another carbon port, the function of which was unknown, and it was this arm that she held across the table towards Shu. She pointed at his right arm, and opened her right hand. She held it palm-up across the table, as though asking him to read her fortune, in the old manner of fortune-tellers of centuries past. His eyes jerked back up to look at her face, but it was in profile to him; she still did not look at him. He might as well not have been in the room, for all the attention she was giving him.

“I choose the memory, and I choose the length of time,” she said to Shu.

“No,” he countered. “I choose the memory. And I stay as long as I like.”

“No,” she replied. “It’s my brain, and they’re my memories. You don’t get to play in there like a kid in a candy shop.”

Jensen looked rapidly between them as they were bargaining.

“Wait ---” he started.

“Shut up,” Malik snarled. “Eighteen. First kiss, and that’s all.”

Shu laughed. “You must have been younger than that, Blackbird. And by first kiss, you must be more specific. First kiss with whom? The seventh boy you took to your bed? And where was that kiss? On your cheek? On your hand? No, my dear. No, no, no. Do not insult me with these amateur offers. I want your first time. The first time you enjoyed it. Yes, the very first time you craved it, and were finally satisfied. I want to savour it too.”

“What the hell is going on?” Jensen snapped, utterly revolted.

“Shut the fuck up,” Malik snarled again, not looking at him. “No. You can’t have that one.”

“Then no deal,” Shu said with a slimy grin, and he began to stand up, making as though to leave.

“Stop!” Jensen shouted, and slid his nanoblade out, its edge against Shu’s neck within moments. An alarm instantly blared.

“Phil, you have ten seconds to cease hostilities,” Amanda intoned coldly into the air, “Or I will be forced to terminate you. Nine. Eight. Seven….”

Shu smiled lazily, his crooked teeth gleaming in the bright light of the LED bulbs above the table.

The nanoblade slid back into the case in his arm, and Jensen slowly sat back down into his metal folding chair. Shu sat back as well, but he didn't look the slightest bit concerned.

“Thank you, Phil,” Amanda stated. “Any further hostilities by you against any guests at Manshan will be met by immediate lethal force. You have no further warnings available. The Management does not tolerate violations to the sanctity of neutral ground. Thank you for your cooperation.”

He grunted. 

Shu said, “Less than one hour here, and you’ve already lost your single warning. Phil.” He said the name with a little extra emphasis. So he knew it wasn’t his real name. Jensen didn’t care.

“You want her memories,” Jensen snarled. “You say you want to savour them. How can you do that? What are you?”

Shu’s smile turned more sinister with every moment that passed. “So many questions. I don’t answer questions for free. Phil.”

Malik growled at Jensen. “Shut up, Phil.”

The older Chinese man stared at Jensen, then slowly took his right hand out from under the table. For the first time, Jensen saw that it was covered not with skin, but with some kind of an elaborate glove made to look like skin. In a sickening parody of removing a glove with his teeth, Shu placed the middle finger of his right hand into his mouth, between the two rows of crooked teeth, and gently pulled. 

The skin-like glove came off. Jensen felt nauseated, even though he’d seen much worse things. Hell, his own augments could be more disgusting than that.

But underneath the skin-glove, the right hand was revealed to be a glistening network of augmented, electrical living flesh. It flashed and pulsed with light, almost as though it was attached to a beating heart, and the finger tips seemed to glow along the edges where the nails should have been attached.

Small rivulets of something gelatinous and slightly opaque dripped from the seam of where the glove had attached to Shu’s wrist, and he gently used the index finger of his left hand to wipe the excess from the edge of his clothing and onto the table. Jensen swallowed.

“So what, you’re an AI?” he asked.

“That’s four questions so far. That would normally be four memories. Phil. But you don’t know the rules of this game, so for today only, I offer you and the Blackbird a choice. Either I answer your four questions, and in return I choose a memory from you… or you choose a memory for the Blackbird to give to me. Either way, she gets her order, and passage to the Pangu. What do you say? Phil.”

Malik shook her head at him. She reached out to touch the glistening hand with her bare palm.

“Naughty!” said Shu, and a tiny bolt of lightning arced from his right hand to strike the table near her hand where she had reached for his. The bolt had left a smoking mark on the table. 

“Phil hasn’t made his choice, Blackbird. Play nicely, or we don’t play at all.”

She ground her teeth, and glared daggers into his eyes. Then she turned to Jensen.

“If he chooses, he goes through your brain and picks whatever he wants to see. He stays in there and goes through that memory until he’s finished with it. You can’t stop the memory. It’s like a dream, only worse. You can’t wake up, and you can’t control it. It’s your true memory. From what I can tell though, he won’t alter anything. I don’t think he can,” she said, staring back at Shu, who said nothing, merely continued to hold the flashing blue palm on the table like an obscene, living page out of a twentieth century anatomy and physiology textbook.

“Something happens to the memories when he goes through them,” he said, carefully phrasing it so that it was not a question.

“Nothing happens,” she replied, but her face had become nearly white with rage and a large dose of fear.

“If that were true, you wouldn’t have tried to bargain so hard,” he murmured.

A tear splashed down her face, unexpected and unwelcome. It traced into her chest, carving a path between her breasts. 

Blackbird 1; Shu 2; Phil 1.

He never could stand to see a woman cry.

“Take mine,” Jensen said, and he slapped his hand onto Shu’s open hand before Malik had a chance to react. Lightning arced, and the last thing Jensen heard before a black cloud descended upon over his eyes was the sound of Malik shouting.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Explicit sex scene ahead. Merry Christmas.

Adam stumbled into his Zeleň apartment, and listened to the soft sounds coming from his bedroom. In one hand was a bag full of bottles of cheap blended whisky from the corner shop; in the other, he held a bag with a box of condoms and lube. His brain was fuzzy, and he felt nearly drunk enough. He swigged from his open bottle again, determined to keep the Sentinel system from sobering him up. It was ultimately a losing battle, but he knew its limits. Half of a bottle every twenty minutes or so would keep him close to inebriated, enough anyway for him not to think too closely about what he was about to allow himself to do.

Earlier that day, upon arriving back from London, Director Jim Miller had ordered members of Task Force 29 who had been on the mission to attend their mandatory debriefings, including at least one session with the resident psychologist Dr Delara Auzenne, then to undertake two weeks of paid annual leave. There was also an option for agents to take more time paid off if they wanted, no questions asked, provided they had enough accrued time available. Given the nature of the job, and the workaholics it naturally attracted, it was no surprise that nearly every team member had baulked at the idea to the point of near mutiny. Even the auxiliary staff members who had stayed behind in Prague to support the field staff had joined the chorus. No one had wanted to stop working. There were piles of evidence to comb through, prisoners to interrogate, and hot leads to follow through.

Jim silenced them all with a glare through eyes full of pain and a face still sweating through the worst of the Orchid’s poison. The antidote Jensen had administered had worked, but the Director looked absolutely terrible. 

“TF29 has been working ‘round the clock since the bombing at Růžička Station,” he stated flatly, his voice rising in the silence that followed. “And because of this, we’ve stopped a major terrorist incident in London that could have set back relations between augmented and non-augmented people throughout the world forever. Not to mention, we saved hundreds, maybe thousands of lives here in Prague.”

The taskforce had become quiet. In the nerve centre of the ground floor, people stopped working. He rarely made announcements, usually opting for emails or cascades of information through team leaders via their team meetings. But this time was different.

He stood up straighter, and looked up into the eyes of people standing next to the guardrails of the upper floors to look down into the bullpen.

“We’ve done the impossible in the last few weeks by working impossible hours. We lost very good people, but we took on the terrorists, and we won despite our casualties. But now we’re all running on fumes, and agents who run on fumes get sloppy. Sloppy agents mean mistakes, and lives that might otherwise be saved are lost. And lives can never, ever be replaced. So now, you’re all going to do exactly what you’re told, the way you’ve always done from the day you signed up. There will be a roster. And when it’s your turn, you will all take your leave, or by God, I will take your resignation right now! Because those who cannot take such a simple order have no place here, and no future on my task force!”

To reinforce mandatory nature of the annual leave, and circumnavigate every wily agent on his task force, Miller also forced every person going on leave to relinquish their TF29 keycard to Agent Marcie Sedlák, the agent who administered Praha Dovoz, the shipping company that served as their legitimate front. This rendered them incapable of using the secret elevator entrance. The first to turn over his keycard to the store front operative was the Director himself. ‘Do as I say, and not as I do’ was clearly not Miller’s motto. 

“You can retrieve your keycard from Agent Sedlák at zero eight forty-five on your first day back,” he said to the London team, who was the first to be sent on leave. The group was crowded in the small foyer of the shipping company, and one by one, they handed over their keycards to Marcie, who smirked as she took them from the disgruntled agents, now in their civilian gear, but struggling to look anything other than tactical agents. 

“Now get out of here,” ordered Miller.

“This is bollocks,” grumbled Duncan MacReady, irritated enough to show open defiance to the Director.

“Two weeks downtime, Mac,” Miller replied, his voice rising in intensity and fury. “If you can’t handle such a simple direct order, maybe we need to arrange for a different conversation. A more formal one perhaps?” 

Aria casually bumped into Mac’s arm and pulled his elbow gently. “C’mon,” she said. “I’m dying for some svíčková and dumplings. And a beer.” She smiled sweetly at him, as though it wasn’t obvious that she was trying to defuse an angry, ticking British time-bomb.

He looked down at her from his considerable height, and said, “It’s barely eleven hundred, agent.” 

She smiled even wider. “It’s seventeen hundred somewhere, sir,” she replied. “And we’re officially off the clock.”

He rolled his eyes, but let her gently pull him away. She tossed a look over her shoulder, where her chestnut hair, uncharacteristically loose from her tight bun, cascaded down her back. It caught the pale morning light streaming from the window of the shop front. “C’mon Jensen!”

Adam looked at her, stoic and unmoving. She huffed and stopped moving towards the entrance. Dropping Mac’s arm, she quickly stomped over to Jensen, and grabbed his arm in the same way she’d pulled at Mac’s.

“You too,” she said to him with a pleading look on her face. “Food. Beer. Relaxation.”

He sighed and shook his head. “I’m just going to head home,” he said quietly. “You go with Mac. I’ll be fine.”

“Nope,” she said with a gentle smile. “You’re coming with us. You never eat anything but that horrible sugary cereal, or drink that cheap blended whisky. It’s time to experience a bit of culture. We’re going to Café Louvre in New Town!”

He rolled his eyes. “That’s a tourist trap.”

“Yup, and we’re officially tourists for two weeks.”

Mac growled from the door. “Come on, Jensen. Just say yes, and get it over with. Saying no to her is like kicking a puppy. One that can make five head shots in six seconds, twice, in twenty-five meters.”

Jensen looked down at the petite woman pulling on his arm, and said, “You trained for the Olympic rapid-fire event?” 

Aria smiled up at him, delighted to have his snagged attention at last, and said, “Come buy me a drink, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

He followed. 

The drinking started from around noon, and continued well into the evening as they bar hopped around the tourist district, paying ridiculous prices for craft lagers and beers that Jensen would normally never touch. The Sentinel was working overtime to clear the alcohol, but Jensen worked hard to keep it busy. 

He was determined to stay as drunk as possible. Aria and Mac seemed happy to drink at their own pace without feeling the need to match him drink for drink, for which Jensen was almost embarrassingly grateful. It was like they understood that he couldn’t help but drink them under the table because he couldn’t help but cheat with the Sentinel RX augmentation. So they enjoyed their drinks more slowly as he tossed back two or three more times the amount they consumed, but no one said a word about it, and for that alone, he decided he would stay with them a little longer. ‘One more drink’, he told himself. ‘One more bar.’ 

Aria regaled them with stories of her conquests as a prodigy markswoman from an early age, and her father’s pride at her prowess. She had joined the US Marine Corp, who had let her continue her Olympic training, but everything had gone to hell when the Incident had occurred during military leave. An augmented civilian had ripped off her right arm and part of her shoulder for reasons that had never become clear. Such were the stories of the Incident; the augmented who had been affected were often never able to explain why they had attacked with such violence towards others, and abject apologies in any case did very little to assuage the pain they wrought in the lives of their victims – those who survived, anyway.

“It was augmentation or nothing,” she said simply. “Prosthetics without augmentation technology wouldn’t let me shoot the way I wanted. And I just couldn’t give it up, even though we knew my Olympic dreams were over, you know. No augs allowed.”

Jensen nodded, even as he saw the brief flare of old bitterness and pain in her eyes. Her left hand rubbed at her right shoulder almost absent-mindedly.

“I really thought law enforcement would be the next natural fit after we found out I have a rare form of neuroprosthesis rejection syndrome, and need more neuropozene than most to counteract it. I was honorably discharged, but I knew the score. Just trying to get insurance to carry me after the diagnosis was a nightmare.” Her eyes seemed to glaze over as she stared into the flame of a tealight on their table. 

Mac returned with drinks, and saw her gloomy face. “What’s this?” he stated in annoyance. He glared at Jensen. “What’d you do?”

“Nothing,” Jensen replied automatically. “She was telling me about the Olympics.”

Mac rolled his eyes and sat down. “Bunch of bigots. Most naturals end up testing positive for something, but they still won’t let our Ari compete. She has all these certificates and medals that prove she won everything before she got auged. She has natural talent. Bastards.”

Aria looked up into Mac’s scarred face, and tremulously smiled. The tears that threatened to fall from her brown, doe-like eyes seemed to shimmer in the weak candlelight. Mac’s face scowled, and he thrust a pint into her hands. 

“Drink, agent,” he commanded. 

“Yes, sir,” she replied, and duly took a deep drink, smiling around her glass.

When Jensen had stood up to buy his round of drinks many rounds later, the better part of him told him to leave when he noticed Mac gently nuzzling Aria’s neck, but the detective in him couldn’t bring himself to look away. Clinically, in an almost detached way, he noted that Aria’s reaction wasn’t startled or disgusted; instead, she leaned against Mac’s chest, perfectly content to let him lean down to nip and suck at her neck. He didn’t need his enhanced hearing to know it was a sigh of pure lust escaping her lips. ‘All very cozy,’ he noted to himself. ‘This has been going on a while. And he said ‘our Ari’ earlier. Pet name.’

“Hello mister, two hundred credits,” the bartender prompted again, looking irritated. Jensen glanced back, paid the outrageous bill, and wandered back to their table, easily balancing the three pints in a tight cluster between his shiny carbon hands. 

Empty pint glasses stood waiting for collection on the table, and Jensen sat down nonchalantly, ignoring how Mac and Aria now sat primly next to one another, as though they hadn’t been feeling each other up while Jensen had stood at the bar. ‘They must know the CASIE aug tells me they’re ready to fuck each other in the bathroom,’ he thought somewhat sourly.

“Where are we going next,” Aria said, as she gulped down a large mouthful. Mac shifted back lazily, a self-satisfied smirk on his scarred face, and yawned loudly. He picked up his pint, and drank deep, and said, “You live nearby, right Jensen?” He plucked at the rectangular cardboard coaster on the table, twirling it on a corner, carefully not looking at Jensen’s face.

Jensen frowned at both of them, but nodded once. He wasn’t a schoolboy, a virgin, or a novice at any of these games. But he was surprised, nonetheless.

“Got any of the good stuff at home, Tin Man?” goaded Mac, who finally looked into his eyes.

“Depends,” he shot back. 

“On?” 

“On what you’re bringing to the party.”

The words had just tumbled out of his lips, unbidden, the way they had been doing more and more. He really had intended to tell them he was going home alone, and that they could just continue doing whatever the fuck they were doing without him. But instead, he was playing along, inviting them even, and he tipped his pint into his mouth for a deep swallow as though he didn’t have a care in the world as to Mac’s reply.

“Ari love,” Duncan rumbled, as he tilted his head at Jensen, considering his words. “You got your meds with you?”

Aria checked her purse to be certain. “Yup,” she said, and hiccupped unexpectedly. She found this very funny, and laughed with abandon. ‘Definitely drunk,’ Jensen thought. 

“Never mind,” Jensen said, and moved to stand up. “This is a bad idea,” he said, deciding that sobriety would be required to anything that involved… whatever this was. He’d pushed his luck as far as it would go. 

“No,” Aria said instantly, staring at him with intense eyes, her doe-like features taking on a fierceness he normally only ever saw from her on the shooting range, or more recently in London, in the field. She reached out with her right hand – the augmented one – and grabbed his across the table. He stared down at their fingers, and he found himself slowly sitting down again. Her face was serene, and her light brown eyes looked like pools of good whisky in the candlelight.

“I know I’m tipsy,” she said clearly, “but you should also know that I’ve wanted this for a very long time.”

And she just held his gaze defiantly, without moving a muscle, as though her whole body was augmented, not just her right hand, or her right arm. The stance of a trained markswoman, one who knew how to wait for her target, wait for the right moment, and take her target down.

He stared back almost in anger at her, not liking the feeling of having been pinned by her gaze. But she was so open, so vulnerably Aria, that he could feel no other motivation than the naked longing on her face.

“Mac,” he said, without taking his eyes from Aria’s face. “This… is okay with you?”

“Wouldn’t have brought it up if it wasn’t, mate,” rumbled the man. “And our Ari belongs to herself. Her decisions are hers alone to make.”

Aria broke her gaze from Jensen’s, but without removing her hand from Jensen’s, she looked at Mac, and said, “I am also yours, sir. You know that.”

“I do, agent,” he said, and he leaned over possessively to nip her lips. “But this is your call. I don’t give a fuck what you fuck, so long as I’m there too. You know that.”

Together, they looked at Jensen, who sat stunned, but kept his face neutral. ‘Thank God for all those poker nights with Malik and Pritchard,’ he thought somewhere under the alcohol blurring his thoughts. He sat back, retrieving his hand, and let his shoulders hit the back of his chair, slouching to one side, insolence infusing his posture.

“I won’t be your fuck-toy,” he said to them, pure arrogance and irritation dripping from his lips.

Aria laughed, delighted. “No,” she said with pure joy, as she retrieved her drink and drank deeply. She wiped her mouth and continued, “But I’ll be yours tonight, if you want.” 

His eyes darkened under his shades, though the couple couldn’t see that. In his tight black trousers, his cock tightened, and he felt his feelings war inside. He hadn’t had anyone in so long. Not since the augmentations. And before that, not since a few casual one-night stands. Not until after Megan. He shut off his memories quickly before he could think about Megan. 

He stared at Aria from behind his glasses, safe behind his neutral gaze. She stared back, a patient huntress. He considered her, undaunted, breathing gently in the candlelight. Time seemed to slow as he thought about his options, the ramifications, and whether he cared about any of it. 

He slowly reached forward, picked up his pint, drained it, and continued to look at her. Then he turned to Mac.

“And you, what… just watch?” 

Mac chuckled, and drank. “Something like that.”

Another thought curled, and his mouth betrayed him again.

“And if I want more than that?” Where the fuck did that come from? 

Mac’s laugh became decidedly darker.

“I’m sure we can come to something of mutual benefit.”

Fuck it. It had been too long, and he was drunk enough not to give a damn anymore. If these two were in, he was in. 

The three drained their drinks rather quickly after that, and afterwards none of them could recall much of the walk to Jensen’s Zeleň apartment. He gave them the code to get in, and told them to make themselves comfortable as he picked up some necessary supplies.

And so he found himself standing right outside his bedroom, feeling like a fool, a bag full of cheap blended whisky in one hand, and the box of condoms and lube in the other. The corner shop owner had been all too used to selling him the whisky; the other items had resulted in a raised eyebrow. It had taken all his nerve not to growl at the man or just walk away altogether, leaving the purchases on the counter. Jensen was no prude, but the whole situation was rapidly becoming ridiculous. He was apparently about to screw two work colleagues, one of whom was supposedly straight and hated all augs, and the other he thought had been single and nursed some kind of a crush on him. Instead, they had been seeing each other for a while, apparently had some kind of open relationship, possibly with some BDSM elements, and the supposedly straight guy who hated all augs might actually not be either. 

‘Some detective’, he thought with derision at himself, as he heard a feminine moan, which quickly cut off with the sound of a slap. The sound propelled him into his bedroom before he realised what he was doing. The sight that greeted him took his breath away and hardened his cock before he could completely take in the scene.

Aria Argento, golden chestnut hair unbound, was on her elbows and knees on the bed, still in her bra and underwear, her beautiful white ass in the air. Duncan MacReady stood beside the bed, still fully clothed in black from head to toe, his boots still on, Jensen noted with irritation. But his hand was gently rubbing a circle around the red imprint of his hand on Aria’s perfectly pale ass, while she shook gently into her folded arms, a quiet moan emanating from her throat as he dug his fingers into the mark, digging into the pain a bit more.

Her legs shook a bit, and Mac leaned down to her ear, and whispered, “Jensen’s back, love. Be a good girl, and stay very still for me now.”

She moaned, and said, “Yes, sir,” and became still on his bed, her beautiful body exposed for him to see. Mac moved away from her towards Jensen, and said, “Welcome to the party.”

He swallowed once, then clicked his shades open, wanting to see everything. “What are her safe words?”

“Green for good, yellow for when it is becoming close to too much. Red for stop. And I shouldn’t need to tell you mate,” Mac said, his eyes becoming dark with something close to hatred. “Don’t hurt her. Well, not the way she doesn’t like. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Jensen said, pulling his eyes away from the prostrate woman on his bed. “I know.”

“Not fucking joking, Jensen,” Mac said, and pushed a finger into his face. “I know what your kind can do, and I know what an apology is worth to the dead. So don’t fuck this up. If it were up to me, we wouldn’t be here. But this is her fantasy, and I don’t own her. Took me three ex-wives to figure out not to try to own a woman. But by God, I won’t lose her to you not knowing your own fucking strength.” 

“Why don’t you go sit over there,” Jensen said, pointing to the chair next to his desk, “and get to watching.” 

Mac growled and swiped the clinking bag containing the cheap whisky. He peeked in and said, “This isn't the good shit. Where’s the good shit?”

“In the kitchen, in the cupboards above the sink.”

The whole exchange, Aria hadn’t moved a muscle. Jensen moved towards her, and Mac growled. 

“Not without me,” he said tightly. Jensen nodded, and held his hand out for the bag of booze. He could already feel the Sentinel RX wearing off the alcohol. Mac handled him the bag, and stalked into the kitchen to raid it for the most expensive alcohol he could get his hands on, while Jensen opened the whisky. It went down as rough as it always did, tearing up his throat and burning his nostrils, sending his eyes watering with its power. His aug was immediately overwhelmed, and he felt his body loosening again under the power of the alcohol. He felt he could breathe again.

Mac returned with a heavy glass full of amber liquid. He mocked-toasted Jensen and said, “To your health. I found a forty-year-old Macallan. Did Sarif install your good taste, or did it come naturally?”

Jensen whirled. “That was not in the cupboards above the sink. That was in the stash behind the false wall panel, and it cost ten thousand credits,” he snapped.

Mac sipped it very carefully, and smiled a huge shit-eating grin.

“And that was a four-hundred credit sip,” he replied. “Very nice.”

Aria let a tiny ‘mrrph’ out from under her hair, and the men zeroed in on her prone figure. Her arse was still in the air, but the red mark from Mac’s slap had faded. Mac smiled, and gestured to Jensen. ‘All yours,’ he seemed to indicate, as he made himself comfortable on the chair, content to sip the finest whisky in Jensen’s collection. 

Jensen growled and huffed at Mac, but walked over to the woman. He began to run a hand up Aria’s back. She hissed a breath in. 

“It’s Jensen,” he said quietly.

“I know,” she replied in a moan. 

“How?” he said.

“Your hands,” she said. 

He paused, nearly removing his hands away from her. The carbon augmentations suddenly looked obscene against her natural flesh. But Aria reached back and pressed them harder into her back, pulling one to rest on her ass, and not so subtly on the edge of her beautiful satin and lace underwear. It was Brazilian cut, he noted somewhere deep in the back of his mind that remembered shopping for such things for Megan, navy blue, and it contrasted wonderfully against the cream of her pale skin.

“Your hands are warm and smooth,” she said. “It feels wonderful. Mac’s are rougher.”

“Working man’s hands,” Mac replied from his chair, his booted feet on the edge of Jensen’s bed.

“Least you could do is take off your boots,” Jensen said to the man, looking over at him with irritation. 

“You’re a total slob, and you complain about my footwear?” 

“My bed’s clean,” he replied. “If you want to put your feet up, take your damned boots off.”

Mac looked at him over his whisky, very deliberately took a deep swallow, and did not move his booted feet from the bed. Jensen decided to ignore him for the moment, and focus on the woman below him. He let his hands trail to her underwear, and pulled down gently, leaving them trapped just below her hips. He let an index finger gently run down the dip of her back and tease, gently moving as though to move further down, then returning back to the edge of her underwear, tugging them towards himself, pulling her body towards him, just teasing, but not removing her clothes. She was trapped, pressed against him, and deliciously undone.

She moaned, and her hands moved to stretch out in front of her, clutching at the sheets, then releasing, again and again, as he teased her. 

“Having fun, love?” Mac cooed at her, as she hissed when Jensen finally dipped a finger into her folds. He folded her ankles together, keeping her legs tightly closed as he leaned gently into her, the delicious sensation of being only somewhat revealed to him making her head reel.

“Oh God, yes,” she moaned as Jensen gently pumped a single finger in and out of her tightly closed slit. He snaked his other hand under her belly, then pulled her hips up higher, effortlessly holding her up, watching the backs of her thighs shake as she struggled to maintain her weight on her elbows. Her underwear remained trapped, and keeping her legs tightly together, he joined a second finger into her body. Her moans became a tight keening. He didn’t let up the pressure, only supported her from below, keeping her ass high in the air, his fingers working her g-spot gently, then gradually increasing the pressure, harder as her moans increased. He took more and more of her weight as her arms began to buckle and her elbows began to collapse. He watched her shoulders as her augmented right side was shaking as hard as her left, and felt himself grow harder against the back of her thighs.

A third finger joined in, and he twisted his wrist cruelly, letting his augmented hand do the work, letting her feel knuckles as he turned them against the slightly spongey place where he remembered Megan would shriek, and just like Megan, there was an instant reaction. Aria sobbed and writhed. Jensen obliged with a thumb from the arm holding her pelvis, sneaking in from under her curls, finding her clit, and then he simply held it down as she shuddered and squirmed around him. He held her firmly between his hands, and she rocked her pelvis unashamedly, twisting and grinding on that thumb and around his fingers as he let her feel his hard length against her thighs, not yet letting himself do anything about it. Again and again, he brought her to an edge, only to back down as she keened for more, drawing out the sensation, not letting her go over, wondering how much further he could take her.

She felt so safe and immobilized, lost in the domination and how determined he seemed to serve her pleasure. Her legs were still trapped, and the pressure of his thighs against her incapacitated her ability to move any further than what he allowed. Even his clothing elicited a further thrill, the sensation against her skin ratcheting up further pleasure against her nerves. It thrilled her, her nakedness and his clothed body, the captivity and the gentle but determined domination. Her senses climbed ever higher as he ground her fingers into her, helping her seek the best grind.

Then his other thumb circled around her anus, and she heard him say, “Mac, you good with this?”

Mac laughed darkly and said, “It’s her body, mate. Ask her, not me.”

“Aria,” he said gently, as he rubbed the clean little star so carefully. “Do you want this?”

She was sobbing in equal parts joy and frustration, as her orgasm seemed to mount then disappear, so great were the feelings he built in her body, only to let them ebb away, to flow back up again.

“Lube,” she choked out. “Yes, but with lube.”

“Mac,” he said looking up at the man who was riveted by the scene before him. “The bag.”

Mac seemed to wake up, and pushed his boots off the bed. “Got it,” he said, and he wandered over to help the other man. The lube was cold, and she tightened as it fell over her sensitive flesh. 

“Sorry love,” Mac said, and he leaned over to bite at her shoulder in compensation. She shivered again. 

“He’s going to fuck your hole now,” he said to her open ear, kissing then licking at it as he continued to pour his filthy words into it, causing her to moan. “He’s going to make it feel so good, but you’re going to wait. You’re going to wait like a good girl, and when I tell you to, you’re going to come. I’m going to sit over there, and when I say, you’re going to come apart. And you’re going to tell me how much you love it.”

She moaned hard as Jensen’s thumb breached her lubricated ass, and Mac casually moved his chair towards Ari so that her face could see his. Their eyes never left each other’s. She looked almost angry, and he smirked.

“Can I…?” she panted, as Jensen worked his hands in and out of her, rubbing hard against her g-spot, her clit, and into her ass. There were perks to being able to turn his fingers in any direction he desired. He let his hands speed up slightly, working her between his fingers, letting her grind against him.

“Not yet, love.” Mac’s eyes were dark as obsidian, and he sipped one of the most expensive whiskies in the world as Aria writhed on Jensen’s hands. 

“Pleeease, sir,” she whined. “I’m so… so close….,” she whimpered.

“I know, darling,” Mac cooed. “You’re so beautiful. You’re doing so well. Not yet.”

Jensen smirked and very carefully leaned over, changing the angle. Aria choked out another moan, and Jensen looked at Mac’s face, which was utterly entranced by the woman he was driving insane. Mac never looked away at his beloved Aria. He was waiting for something, some cue, something only he could know. Aria panted, writhed, and shook, her thighs becoming coated with her slick desire. He pressed down slightly harder on her g-spot, rotated slightly faster on her clit, and finally, quietly moaned her name as he fucked her with his hands. 

It was the first word he’d said since touching her.

Aria’s back suddenly locked, and her moans became a high-pitched wail. Mac smiled almost painfully, and breathed, “There. Come now,” and she did. As her orgasm took her, she shook apart on Jensen’s hands. He felt her body squeeze his fingers together in a vice, and heard her call Jensen’s name even as she stared into the face of another man. He heard her say how good it was, how long she’d wanted this, and how good his hands were. It seemed to last for a very long time as she continued to grind her way through the spasms. She was entirely without shame, hooking her leg around the back of his knee to bring him to where she needed him, and moaning hard into the sheets beneath her.

And then finally, at long last, he felt her pant out, “Oh my God, why haven’t we done this before?” before chuckling and moving very carefully to ease him out of her.

She rolled over, her underwear still tangled around her upper thighs, and smiled at him with perfect joy, her slightly mussed hair a halo on the wrinkled grey sheets below her. She wriggled and pulled the navy satin lace underwear away, revealing wild curls the same shade as her golden brown hair, not shaved or tamed in the slightest. They were slick with her arousal and errant lube. She laughed with the joy of a very pleased woman, and pushed a foot onto his clothed torso,using the other to gently trace the bulge of his trousers.

“I want you,” she said simply, her eyes open and trusting. He looked at her, but then his shades clicked down, and the pounding of his heart suddenly did not go unnoticed by his clinical detachment.

‘I felt nothing,’ he thought with coldness seeping under his skin. ‘Didn’t feel her skin, her slickness, nothing,’ he thought with growing numbness. ‘Heard her voice, felt her squeeze me. But I couldn’t feel her.’

He backed away, and the dizziness in his movement was overtaken by a HUD signal. ‘Hyperventilation,’ it warned. ‘Increased heartbeat caused by overstimulation. Diagnosis: anxiety attack. Recommendation: sit, breathe normally, await normality.’

‘Normality,’ he thought hysterically, as his hyperventilation continued. He grabbed the opened bottle of cheap blended whisky from the dresser and fairly dashed away from the room, ignoring Aria’s heightened call and Mac’s rumbling answer. He needed to get from whatever this was. He didn’t know what was wrong, but he knew better than to stay.

He didn’t know he was in his living room until he felt a gentle hand on his arm. Who the fuck----

He whirled, nanoblade automatically sliding out to come at the throat---

He was very lucky Aria was so short. His blade missed her completely, but she stared up at him, apparently wearing one of his old Sarif Industries t-shirts and nothing else. Mac stood in the doorway of the bedroom, his eyes dark and angry, and a .357 revolver in his right hand. Jensen’s adrenaline spiked again. The HUD warnings shrieked across his eyes.

“Breathe, Adam,” Aria said to him gently, her hands up in warning first, then coming very slowly towards him. She reached for one hand, ignoring the bladed one, and lead him to his couch. She sat down, tugging at him. “Lay down, put your head in my lap.”

“No---”

“Yes.” Her eyes were like molten gold, and with her hair down, she looked like some kind of ancient goddess, one that he’d just fingered into oblivion, but had not cowered into submission of any kind.

He felt shamed beyond words. He could have killed her. He didn’t dare look at Mac, but he knew the man had not yet put away his weapon. He stared at Aria, unwilling to believe she could trust him, but her power lay in her gaze, and reluctantly, he let her pull him to his own couch. She gently forced him to lay down on his back, and she arranged his head on her lap. She began to comb through his unruly black hair with long fingers, half natural, half augmented. 

“Shades off,” she commanded in a firm tone that she could only have gotten from the United States Marine Corp.

He sighed, and clicked them off. She gently rubbed at his temples, smoothed his brow, and began to speak to him as he struggled to regulate his breathing to something suitable for a task other than sprinting. He was vaguely aware of Mac in his kitchen, and heard him return with the precious bottle of Macallan, plus another two glasses, one of which he passed to Aria.

“Wow,” she said as she took a little sip. 

Jensen growled a bit from her lap, and she laughed.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “I won’t let him drink all of it. We’ll leave some for you.”

“So generous,” he drolled.

She continued to comb his hair, and he continued to let her, for reasons he did not try to unravel for a moment. Then she said, “You were going into a panic attack. I used to get them. After the Incident. How often do you get them?”

He didn’t reply, but when he tried to sit up, to get away from this interrogation and from her kindness, she gently held his shoulders down. Though he could easily have overpowered her, he could smell her arousal so close to his mouth and the whisky in the air. It finally occurred to him that he was just so damned tired. Tired of fighting, tired of enduring, and so very tired of being alone. He let his head fall back down onto her lap, and he sighed deeply, closing his eyes and ignoring everything but the feel of her hands on his face and in his hair.

“It depends,” he hedged. 

“On what?” 

“Stress levels.”

“Oh, because your job isn’t stressful at all,” she replied sarcastically.

“The job actually helps,” he replied, his eyes closed, focusing on the feel of her hands carding his hair. “When I’m out in the field, I feel like I’m doing something about the problems in this world, and that helps. It’s when I feel like nothing, that’s when it gets bad.”

“So, when we were in there,” she mused aloud. “What triggered it?”

He stiffened, and tried to sit up. This time, she didn’t stop him.

“What did I do?” Her eyes sought his, and he looked away. He didn’t want to think about this anymore.

Mac drank from his glass, then said harshly, “Lady asked you a question. Least you could do is answer.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Jensen replied. “I’m sorry. It’s late. I’ll call you a taxi.”

“No,” she replied, and the sound of tears in her voice cut him like a knife. He turned to stare at her, and his enhanced hearing caught the sound of Mac’s teeth grinding. He was wondering if Mac was about to shoot him, when she continued.

“You don’t owe me an explanation, but I would like to understand why you pulled away when I asked you to fuck me,” she said. “What did I do wrong? Everything seemed fine until then.”

She reached out to touch his hands, and he flinched so hard it was like his entire body spasmed. He had never seen his body betray himself so thoroughly. His eyes widened, and he stared at his hands. Her eyes widened, and then narrowed.

“It’s your hands, isn’t it? You didn’t like it when I mentioned them at first either.”

He looked away, and then picked up his glass, swirling the liquid. He took a sniff, then a drink. 

“Fuck,” he said with incredulity as he sipped it for the first time. It really was the best whisky he’d ever had.

Mac grinned the dirtiest grin he’d ever seen, and Jensen pointed a finger at him. 

“First of all, fuck you,” he said to him. “I said the cupboards over the sink, not my private stash.”

“Shouldn’t leave your security system so easy to hack then, mate,” the older man replied, totally unrepentant. 

“Why do all my friends hack my shit,” Jensen opined. 

Aria’s eyebrows went up. She said, “You have other friends? Who?” at the same time that Mac said, “You don’t have any friends.” Aria glared at Mac, who gave her a nasty look back, and then they both looked at Jensen, who tossed back more of his Macallan, and sneered at the pair of them.

“Mac, you know my medical background. I didn’t ask for this.” He motioned to his arms and augmentations. “It took me over two years to get used to my augs, and the parts of being human that I’ve lost. Some parts, it’s like it’s been enhanced. My eyes work better than ever before. I can run better than any natural athlete. I can jump higher, lift things no body builder will ever be able to handle, and hear things in registers that probably only dogs and bats should ever get to hear. But some parts are just gone. When I touched Aria, it wasn’t the same. Not by a long shot.”

It was the most he’d ever admitted to anyone about his lack of sensation, and when he looked at his glass, he found the whisky was gone. He stood up abruptly and went to the bedroom, intending to find more of the cheap blended stuff. He was not about to waste the Macallan. He picked up a full bottle and viciously chugged half of it down, not slowing until he felt the Sentinel RX become overwhelmed again. He started to breathe again. Rolling more of the cheap shit into his mouth, he turned around, and found Aria and Mac had followed him down the hallway and into the bedroom. 

As she came towards him, she pulled the worn grey Sarif Industries t-shirt over her head, and let it fall to the ground. Mac kicked it out of his way – his damned boots still on his feet – and smirked as Jensen’s eyes widened. Aria was busy unhooking her navy satin bra, and then she tossed that over her head. Mac caught it in mid-air, and deftly tucked it into his trouser pocket.

“Aria,” Jensen started, “I don’t know if this is a good idea.” But his eyes were wide on her breasts, and he couldn't look away. It had been so, so long.

“I have an idea,” she replied saucily, as she took the cheap bottle from him and tipped a bit into her mouth, wincing as she swallowed. Then she poured a bit over her collarbones, and onto her chest. She reached back to Mac, letting him be her balance, and she directed Jensen’s mouth to her breast, encouraging him to suck the cheap whisky from a nipple.

“Mmm,” she said, as Jensen surprised himself by greedily taking her waist and licking the whisky, then sucking the glistening bud hard. He gently toyed the nipple with his teeth, and she hissed, “A little harder.” He complied, and she moaned loudly, her augmented arm snaking around to hold Mac’s head to her neck, where he nipped and sucked at her there. He licked and sucked, and the feeling of her in his mouth exploded his senses. He didn’t stop to think any further. Her other hand held Jensen to her breast, where he continued to lick and suck, until she moved him to the other side, where her other breast had begun to ache and feel quite lonely and left out.

“My idea is this,” she panted as he pleasured her. “You both fuck me, and we figure out what feels best for you, Adam.” He moaned around her nipple, but she felt instinctively that he was considering pulling away, and running for the hills. His breathing was increasing again.

She reached down and pulled him up to her. He looked into her light brown eyes, now smoky with desire, and she licked his mouth. Once, twice. He opened to her, and let him taste her at last. Her lips opened immediately to him, and the whisky and flavour of Aria exploded under his tongue. 

Oh, it had been so long since he’d let himself have this. He hadn’t even let himself try in a one night stand, for fear that even this would be gone. 

Her tongue stroked his longingly, lovingly. Her hands snaked around to hold his head, thread through his hair again, and press him hard against her. Though it was the first time she had ever kissed him, it felt so natural. Almost like a homecoming. It was probably because she was so effortlessly giving. She wanted to give herself to him, and she was so willing to help him feel whatever he could. Open and aching, she writhed, shamelessly naked against his body, where he was still fully clothed. She felt his erection growing hard again through his clothing, and one hand shimmied between them to cup him there, stroking him, letting her intentions be unambiguous. 

She pulled back and stared into his face. “I have wanted you from the first day you tried to show me how to reload an FR-27 SFR.” 

He winced, recalling how he’d thought she was a new recruit, not the quartermaster of TF29. 

“You wanted me because I thought you were an idiot?” he murmured against the left side of her throat, as he licked up the side to find her ear lobe and gently bite. Mac held her steady, worked her right breast, and gently nipped on the other side of her neck, rolling her nipple to drive her out of mind.

“Oh yes,” she sighed in pleasure, and yelped as Mac viciously bit into her shoulder, only to soothe it with long licks of his tongue. “I wanted to fuck some sense into you then. I want to do it now too.”

Jensen couldn’t help it. The woman was equal parts gentle determination and shameless hussy, and he chuckled into her ear. “Okay, Aria. You win. Fuck some sense into me,” he said with a depth of gratitude and humbleness he hadn’t expected to feel tonight. He felt lust and an unexpected helping of devotion towards this woman suddenly filling his being, making him feel lightheaded, almost like the feeling of hyperventilation, but a quick check of his HUD showed him that his systems were normal, if slightly elevated for heart rate and alcohol.

Mac grunted behind her, and said, “Hear that, Ari love? Agent Jensen wants you to fuck him. What a good girl you must have been.” His voice was tightening with lust and dark, deep tones. “Lay down on the bed. And don’t you fucking touch yourself, love. I’ll know if you do.”

She shivered in their arms, and did as he commanded. Mac stared at Jensen, and without warning, he reached over to the man, grabbed the back of his head, and violently kissed him.

There was no words exchanged between them. The two had been through too many wars, and been fighting with each other, for much too long. Teeth clashed, and at one point, Jensen had to remind himself not to use his augmented strength against the other man. It was a test of willpower, and a reminder to himself of the rules of this game.

Mac was Aria’s primary lover, and Adam was a guest in his own bedroom. If Mac wanted to play with Adam, that might be a possibility, but only if Adam remembered his own strength, and took care to recall Mac’s very real phobias about augmented people, his own partner notwithstanding. How Mac had overcome his phobia to be with Aria had clearly not extended to the rest of the augmented world, and he was letting Jensen know it. 

So Jensen settled for a compromise between equals. He didn’t reach out to touch Mac, but neither did he back down. 

‘Fucker stole my best whisky,’ he thought, as he licked the taste of it from Mac’s mouth, and then gently bit the man’s lower lip. Mac pulled back suddenly, and then stared at the augmented man, breathing hard. Jensen’s augments meant he hardly needed much oxygen, so he simply smirked in reply. 

“The lady’s waiting,” Mac said hoarsely. “Don’t disappoint her.”

“I won’t,” he promised. And then he turned his back to the man, and proceeded at last to remove his clothes. Taking a hint, Mac did the same. One by one, pieces fell to the floor, and Mac’s boots were finally placed by the side of the door, to Jensen’s relief. The men stood in their proud glory on either side of the large bed with the woman in the centre, her hands by her side, her legs slightly drawn up, and her hair tossed around her shoulders. She looked like she couldn’t decide where to look – at the beautiful cut glory of Jensen’s augmented and wiry natural body, or the hardened splendour of her primary lover, whose innumerable roughened scars bore witness to the hardships and near-misses of a soldier’s life. She bit her lower lip, and Mac tutted at her.

“I said no touching yourself,” he admonished her. 

She looked at him as he stroked his heavy cock a few times, priming it for her. 

“I didn’t!” she protested. “I am a very good girl.”

“You just bit your lip. It counts, love,” Mac warned her.

She bit it again. He growled, and pounced.

She squealed as he turned her over on his hairy knees in the center of the bed, and he said, “Quiet Ari love, or I’ll have to gag you.” She quieted, but her hands began to squirm, and her feet became restless on the bed.

“I’m going to give you ten good smacks,” he said. “And while I do, you’re going to suck Jensen’s cock.” 

Mac pointed to the floorboard nearest him and said, “Stand here, Jensen. And give her your cock.”

Jensen decided that although he hated taking orders from almost anyone, and most especially from the arrogant sonuvabitch Duncan MacReady, this one time it might be acceptable. Just this once, and only under these very specific circumstances. He sauntered very slowly over to the other side of the bed, taking his time to stroke Aria’s leg, then Mac’s shoulder, as he moved, making it very clear that he was no one’s fuck-toy, and no one’s to order around. 

Both man and woman on the bed shivered delicately, and he felt his point was made. The couple on the bed positioned themselves, and it was clear that the spanking scenario had played out many times before. ‘They definitely have a kink,’ he let his detective’s mind catalogue, even as he positioned his cock at Aria’s lush pink lips. He took his cock in his hand, and tried to ignore the fact that his hand couldn’t feel the flesh. He could feel the weight a bit, and the nerves of his skin registered the feel of her lips resting on the crown of his cock, but it was incredibly disconcerting to his brain. His brain kept registering that something was holding his cock, but it wasn’t really his hand, because his hand couldn’t feel it. The sensation was missing.

He ignored it, and focused on gently moving the crown of his cock over her lips, again and again, in a lewd parody of putting on lipstick. She smiled against it, and then took his cock in her hands, and began to do it for him. He let go, and attempted to rest his hands… somewhere else. The sides of his body. His hips. Anywhere but her head. Definitely not Mac’s body. He tried to ignore his hands, but it was so hard. His brain screamed at him. Where were his hands? Why weren’t they involved?

He wanted to bury his hands – his real hands – in Aria’s chestnut hair, but he was terrified. Terrified of what it would feel like to not really feel those silky strands. Scared of accidentally forcing her to suck him too hard. Of hurting her. Of not feeling enough. Of feeling too much.

Her mouth opened, and he heard a crack against flesh. 

“One, Aria.” 

She moaned, and when her mouth opened, she sucked him in. He groaned. It was the first time in years that a woman had taken him into her mouth, and the warmth penetrated his cock and went straight to his balls. 

Crack!

“Two. Say thank you.”

She murmured it around his cock, the vibrations a sensation that had him rolling forward, and Mac murmured, “Good girl.” 

Smack!

“Three.”

More praise around his cock. He was going to lose it before they got to ten.

Crack! Smack! Crack!

Again and again she took her punishment, and again and again she praised Mac as she engulfed Jensen’s cock. Spit dribbled from her mouth as she licked at him, sucking hard. He was losing his mind, breathing hard, and she seemed to realise it. She released her hands from around his balls and his cock, and grabbed onto his hands, lacing them with her own.

Her right hand was augmented, and the other was natural.

Crack! 

“Seven, Aria.”

She pulled her mouth away and kissed the crown of his cock, and looking into Jensen’s eyes, which were now fully blown, she said, “Thank you.” 

Smack! Smack! Smack!

Her eyes closed in ecstasy, and she smiled. She dipped her mouth again onto his cock, and continued to suck at him, bobbing her head as he trembled under her ministrations. He held her hands gently, still terrified to hurt her, as she squeezed his hands and licked and sucked.

He was aware of her body being moved on the bed, and of Mac placing her to his liking. He looked up to see Mac placing a condom over his cock, and started playing with her from behind. He lifted her hips again, and dipped into her again and again, never fully breaching her, and watched as she tried to move herself onto him.

She moaned hard, her mouth on Jensen’s cock, and Mac steadied her ass, a thumb placed on her ass again.

“Tell me Ari love,” he panted, as he gently rocked himself in and out of her entrance, never fully giving her what she wanted. “Tell me what you want.”

She pulled her mouth off of Jensen’s cock, and replied, “Your cock,” and then sucked hard again, all the way to his root. She squeezed his hands again, and he felt himself twitching into the back of her throat. She squeezed his hands again, and he felt himself starting to twitch harder.

“Aria…” Jensen moaned, and she let go of his hands to grab at his hips, his ass, and open her mouth and throat still further. He didn’t know where to put his hands, but he was falling to pieces under her ministrations.

She placed one of his hands on her head, giving him permission, and he clutched at it like a lifeline. Still trying so carefully not to hurt her, he gently tried to thrust himself into her mouth, fucking himself into her, but she grabbed at his hip, pushing him harder, trying to make him go faster. 

“Aria, goddammit,” he moaned, his control slipping. His other hand joined his first, and he began to thrust harder, and she moaned. She felt triumphant, her men at her control, at her command, both losing themselves in her.

Finally, Mac groaned and thrust into her hard, and her hands scrambled at Jensen’s hips, for balance as much as anything else. It was more than Adam could take. He grabbed at her hair, and harder than he meant to, he emptied herself into her throat, groaning at the release.

It had been so, so long.

He moaned as he found his release, and he felt Aria pulling at him, and he quickly backed away. She grabbed at his hands, and put them back on her head, and she looked up at him. Tears had streamed from her eyes, but she looked at him with a smile on her face. She had swallowed, and in her eyes, she looked like triumph. He tried to pull away again, but she reached out and pulled him down towards her. He collapsed in an ungainly heap on the floor, his head near hers.

“I’m not done with you, Adam,” she murmured, even as Mac pounded into her, causing her to moan into Jensen’s mouth as she kissed him. He could taste a trace of salt in her mouth, but he didn’t care. He was on his ass on the floor next to his bed, her hair cascading past his face, giving them the illusion of privacy, even as her gasps filled his mouth. Her tongue slipped into his for a moment, only to be stolen away a moment later as she let loose a little scream of ecstasy, a little cry of yes, more, harder. He stroked her face and kissed her again and again, his tongue licking her as she lost herself to the pleasure Mac was giving her. He watched her face, and she moved her head against his forehead, moaning. 

He looked up, and over her shoulder he met Mac’s eyes. They nodded to each other, and Jensen stood up. He lifted her from her shoulders, and gently pushed. Mac’s movements stilled, and she shifted her legs under her. 

Mac slipped out from under her, and Jensen laid her down and then lifted her legs to Mac’s shoulders. Without a word, Jensen slipped next to her, and as Mac began to fuck her again, Jensen kissed her again gently, then slipped his hand down into her curls, patiently touching her to build her arousal again. With his other hand, he held her face close to his, now stroking her hair without fear, moving her head towards him whenever she moved away, angling her mouth open whenever she clenched it shut just so he could lick into it. He tilted her head away at one point to gently bite her neck and ear, then he began to murmur into that perfect shell.

“You look so fucking good right now Aria,” he muttered. “All stuffed with Mac’s fat cock,” he said as he bit her earlobe. She shuddered and wrapped her legs around Mac’s hard hips, lifting herself up to seek a better angle, but having trouble holding onto it, her legs were trembling so hard.

Mac held onto her hips and kept fucking up into her, grunting hard.

“Is he whispering sweet filthy things to you, love,” he said as he thrust. “You just wait until I get down there. I know how your dirty mind works, Ari love.”

She keened again, and held Jensen’s face against her ear, wanting more. His fingers increased their speed against her clit, and then began to press harder. ‘She seemed to like that pressure before,’ he thought mindlessly, as he continued to concentrate on giving her what she needed.

“Lick…me…,” she moaned, in tempo to Mac’s deep thrusts.

“Which…one,” Mac responded, in tempo.

“Mac, keep fucking me,” she wailed. “Adam, lick me. Please, please, please.” Her hips were swirling like crazy around Mac’s thick length, and she moaned, “I’m so close, please. Please, I just need you to lick me while he’s doing that. Please!”

Jensen looked at Mac, and Mac looked back. The two men considered the consequences. Almost simultaneously, the answer came to them.

‘Fuck it.’

Or rather, fuck her.

Jensen quickly moved down the bed, where Aria’s hips writhed, and where Mac joined so deeply with his lady. After a moment’s hesitation, mostly to do with figuring out how to make this work, he simply shook his head, and said, “Turn her over, and lift her up.”

“You what?” 

Jensen pushed Mac away, ignored Mac’s shout, and when he was pushed out, Aria moaned as though something vital had been taken away. 

“Shhh,” Jensen soothed, feeling lost in the moment, and he leaned down to kiss her cunt. Without waiting for permission, and ignoring Mac, he spread her lips and gave her cunt a deep, long lick from her hole to her bud. She let out a hard, guttural moan. He said, “If you want more, do as I say. Sit up, and turn around.”

Glassy eyed, Aria did as he demanded. 

Mac pulled on Jensen’s hair, and bit into the man’s shoulder hard. Jensen resisted the urge to pull out his nanoblade, or something else equally idiotic.

“I give her commands,” Mac hissed into Jensen’s ear. “Never you. Ever.”

Jensen held very still, then nodded once, painfully. Mac let him go, and shoved him forward. Aria waited, poised prettily with her ass perched on her feet, watching the men over her shoulder. 

“I give your commands,” Mac reminded her, and as he leaned over her, he pulled her head back sharply, devouring her mouth in a brutal kiss. She leaned backwards, and he placed his hands over her throat. She was pliant in his grasp, utterly at his mercy. Jensen’s detective mind watched with detachment. ‘Could crush her breathing with very little pressure. Typical BDSM breath-play.’

“What colour are you Aria,” Jensen said clearly. Mac let her throat go instantly so that she could reply.

“Green,” she replied with a gasp, and held onto her primary lover, and kissed him quickly. “Now will you both fuck me, goddammit. I was so close.”

“Language, love,” Mac replied, and swatted her ass playfully. The crack brought back muscle memory to Jensen’s cock, and though it hadn’t been very long, he felt a twitch of desire. 

“I need her on her knees,” Jensen said, “but up, so I can get to her.”

Mac nodded. “I get it now. You in, love?”

“Yeah,” she breathed. “But next time, I want you both, with him in my ass.” 

Jensen spluttered, “Hell, Aria. What makes you think there’s going to be a next time?”

She looked at him and pierced him again with that golden gaze. “Why wouldn’t there be?”

He sighed, looked at Mac, and said, “Get her up, please.”

Mac grinned, and pulled her up, and placed a hand over her mouth. “I think you’ve done enough thinking and talking for one day, Ari love. Time to scream.”

And as he fit himself back inside of her, Jensen scooted under them so that he could work his mouth over her clit. Again and again, he licked her from just above where Mac pounded into her relentlessly, and then focused on the engorged bud above. Feeling wicked, Mac worked a finger into her ass, and Jensen smiled around her clit as he heard her cry out, the noise muffled into Mac's hand, as Mac continued to stream filth into her ear.

”Are you tightening up for me, Ari love?” he crooned into her ear. “I can feel you getting nice and tight on my cock. You better not come yet,” he warned. She shrieked as he slapped her flank once, and he chuckled darkly into her ear. “No, not yet darling, not until I command.” 

Neither man let up. Jensen kept flicking his tongue in and around her folds, around and on her clit, working to drive this incredible woman completely out of her mind with his tongue.

”Please!” she shouted around the fingers he had around her lips. “Duncan, please! I love you, oh please!”

”There you are,” he sighed into her ear, his voice sounding almost strangely sad, “You can come now.” He held her tight, thrusting hard, and Jensen kept licking at her little bud, until at last she fell forward, her limbs completely drained of strength, her legs twitching spasmodically, and her moans became hitching little sobs.

Only then did Mac finally drive his body to completion, grunting into an almost painful-sounding release, having waited with an almost superhero patience to finish last. She stared into Jensen's eyes, tears of exhaustion and joy, and smiled as she heard her lover come behind her. Jensen stared into the depths of her light brown eyes, stunned, and full of peace in the moment. After a moment, Mac pulled out of her, falling onto his back, panting hard, and worked to catch his breath. She flipped over to hold him, and Duncan simply let her as she gently kissed his face again and again.

”I love you,” she whispered against his mouth. “I love you so much.”

Duncan winced, and hid his face in her shoulder, the only betrayal of his emotion in the squeezing of her ribs and the shakiness of his breath. Aria too was out of breath, but Jensen, as usual, benefitted from his augments. Stone cold sober, the Sentinel RX long ago having won its battle against the whisky. His artificial lungs were fine.

What felt new was the peaceful relaxation, the first he had felt in this this augmented life. He sat up, his black hair in disarray, and he looked over at his companions, feeling more than ever like a guest in his own home, but also strangely amused. Duncan still kept his face hidden in Aria’s shoulder, but Jensen was not fooled for a second. The man may have wanted to hide, but Jensen knew what a man looked like when he was in love. 

He turned his head to admire Aria, and she smiled to beckon him close to her. He was shocked to see that where she lay with her hands open, one featured a red circle in the center of her right augmented palm, and the natural one seemed to glow in the pale light of his apartment.

His mind struggled with the horror, but his body reacted only by moving closer to move close to her. To wrap his body around hers, ignoring the movement of limbs brushing against Mac’s. In his mind, the horror built, but it was separate to the motions his body went through, and the feeling of contentment as Aria’s hands – Shu’s hands? – gently stroked his face and his hair, continuing down his chest, not pausing even slightly over the ports over his torso. She naughtily tweaked his nipples, and he grumbled playfully in response, even as he began screaming in his mind that he wanted to get up, find his guns, and blast her to pieces. 

Instead, he saw himself lean over Aria, gently place her hands over her head – not seeming to care that her right hand contained a giant red dot over the center of the palm, and the left human one was now clearly missing its skin glove. It pulsed with electrical lights, the blue electrical flesh glowing unnaturally in the pale street light, and it glistened like poison with its gelatinous viscera. He felt himself lean over Aria to take her mouth again, felt him lace his hands with hers, as he positioned his cock over her, teasing as he waited for Mac's permission. Words were tumbling out of his mouth, but he barely registered them, as the outrage in his mind built into a raging inferno of murderous wrath that had no outlet.

“Hang on,” Mac said, as he placed the tip of a condom in his mouth, then carefully moved his mouth over Jensen’s cock, using his tongue to roll it the rest of the way down. He grinned as Jensen’s cock stirred around him, and licked it a few times to prepare it for Aria.

In his detective's mind, behind his screaming emotions, Jensen knew he was trapped in his memory, even as he knew that Shu was somehow in Aria, though he could not be certain when the memory started. Had the peonies been real? Had he really gone with Malik to Manshan? His mind spun. He knew he was about to fuck Aria, and it was about to be very, very good, but he could not recall how he knew this. He knew the hands he held belonged to Shu somehow. That meant Shu was somehow about to enjoy this. Jensen had remembered that it had been years since he had fucked a woman, and Aria was going to feel amazing.

‘Stop,’ he cried out in his mind. But he remembered what Shu had wanted from Malik, and what Malik had said about what Shu could do.

He had wanted Malik’s first time. The first time she had craved it. The first time she had enjoyed it. 

It was now obvious what had happened. Shu had found the first time Jensen had craved sex after his augmentation. He had looked for the first time he had subsequently enjoyed it. The rage that built in him at this violation of his memories was like nothing Jensen had ever felt before. He thought he had known rage since he realised he had been augmented against his will, and well past the point of where the augmentations should have ended. This was different: this was a rape of his mind, a complete violation of his memories.

He felt himself entering Aria, just as he felt himself enjoying Mac’s attention. He felt as Mac massaged his shoulders, his back, and a few other natural places of his body that were still his own. He felt as Mac lavished bites to his neck, his shoulder, then began kneading at his ass, making his carnal intentions known. He wondered if Shu could jump bodies, even as his sensations grew.

Malik had said he would not be able to control the memory. He tried anyway, but failed. If he was not looking at Aria’s hands in the memory, he could not make himself look now. All he could do was hope that the memory would end soon, that Shu would become bored, and he would be released. 

He tried not to enjoy the sensations, but that was completely futile. This memory had not become sacred as such to him, but it had become a very important placeholder for him. It had become a place where he could remember two crucial things, and it was upon these two things that his life had begun to change.

One, that it was possible for him to have sex without fear of hurting his partner, despite the sheer physical power of his augmentations.

Two, that he was no longer content with living without physical sensation. He didn’t think he could ever have what he saw shining in the eyes of Mac when he looked at Aria, or what he had once felt for his traitorous ex, but by God, he was tired of living a life without physical sensation.

He relived the pleasure of taking and being taken by Aria and Mac, and in his mind, recoiled in abject horror and disgust every time he saw the tell-tale signs in their hands that Shu was inhabiting one of their bodies like a parasite in his mind, feeding off of his memory, and taking what was not his to take. At no point did it seem that he was inside of Jensen’s mind, but he railed at the fact that he was incapable of being certain of this. He waited for moments where he was staring at his own hands in the memory sequence. It was torturous and sensual, hideous and sickening. He tried so hard to distance himself from the emotions and sensations, but it all felt so real. He felt himself rising, coming, relaxing, and rising again.

He had wanted Aria and Mac so badly that night. He had wanted to please them so much. It had been so long since he had allowed himself to be touched, since he had touched anyone else. He was full of desperate longing to please and be pleased by their hands, their lips, and their bodies. He had struggled to trust his own to do the same for them, but bless them, they had extended their trust and their relationship enough to him to let him try. 

It had been one of the best nights of his life, and Shu had not only taken that from him, he had violated it so thoroughly, Jensen knew he would not be able to look at Aria or Mac again without thinking of the twisted little fuck.

As the morning dawned, and Mac and Aria were making their way towards leaving, Aria leaned over to touch his face and kiss his cheek. He noticed her augmented hand did not have the red spot, so Shu must have been riding Mac’s body at that moment.

She looked over Jensen’s shoulder and noticed the vase of peonies for the first time.

“Oh!” she cried. “Where did you find them?”

He looked behind him, and chuckled. “Only just now noticing them? Gotta work on those field skills, agent.”

She slapped his arm playfully. “Seriously, those must’ve cost you a fortune. Which florist in town has them? I haven’t seen peonies in years!”

He shook his head and said, “London Bridge. Random underground seller. Cost me five hundred credits for just those six.”

She whistled low under her breath. “Jeez, Jenson. Between those flowers and that rather fine bottle of whisky, you really are a lush.”

He groaned and said, “Don’t remind me of that whisky, or I really will have to kill Mac.”

Mac laughed, a genuinely fond sound, devoid of the usual sarcasm or mocking humour, and Jensen just ducked his head. 

“See you later, Tin Man,” said Mac, as he opened the door into the cold Prague air, letting Aria precede him. Aria laughed as she stepped out, and Mac followed, a wry smile on his lips. As he closed the door to his apartment, he stepped towards the flowers, and felt like he was approaching a trip mine.

And suddenly, an older-looking Chinese woman appeared, and he stopped moving. The entire room had seemed to stop in time, and it felt as though the air ceased to move. The image of Eliza Cassan on his television screen stopped moving, and the feeling of unreality settled over him.

He remembered that he had been trapped in a memory, but that he had won four questions from Shu. Now it appeared the memory was over, but Shu was nowhere to be seen. 

It was over. The memory was finally over. He shuddered in relief and rage.

He had no idea who this woman was, but as he stared at her, he knew better than to ask any more questions in this place.

“You had four questions, Adam Jensen,” the woman quietly intoned in a sadly resigned voice. “’So what, you’re an AI? What are you? How can you do that? What the hell is going on?’” she recited as though from a play. 

He said nothing, only looking at her as though she were the deadliest enemy he had ever faced.

“My name is Hsu,” she said in the same, pitying voice. “Technically, two of your questions might be considered the same question. So, if you wish to bargain, you have one more question you may ask. Or, you could ask me for a favour. What has happened here is a grave violation of your soul, and though I cannot undo the harm it has done to you, if you are very careful in your request, I may be able to mitigate some of the consequences. But that is the very limit of help I am able to give, and even in this, I may be bending some of the rules to the breaking point. So think very, very carefully, Adam Jensen, before you respond. Do not waste the gift I am offering you. It is not often that I may offer gifts.”

He stared at Hsu, and though in his rage he wanted to scream for answers, he tried to calm down, and consider what she said. 

“Two sets of my questions are repetitious,” he said carefully. 

“Not quite,” she replied.

“Close as dammit,” he shouted at her, his rage boiling over. 

She cocked her head. “What do you propose?”

“I propose that I didn’t know the rules, only not to ask a question. I didn’t know what I was bargaining for.”

“Untrue. The Blackbird told you what would happen.”

“She didn’t say me Shu would mind-fuck me. She didn’t say he’d taint the memory.”

Hsu closed her eyes slowly, and then to his surprise, bowed. “My deepest apologies, Mr Jensen. Shu was not supposed to be like this, but I cannot tell you more without answering one of your questions. For now, I can only apologise.”

He couldn’t help snarling at her, “You don’t owe me any apologies, Hsu. He does. And I can’t ask any questions about where he is, but I assume he’s around here somewhere and can hear me. So I’m going to say this real fucking loud so he can hear it. If I ever see him again, whether on Manshan or the Pangu or anywhere else, I’m going to put a bullet in his fucking brain.”

She stood up again, and pierced him with her gaze. “That is unfortunate, Mr Jensen. Because if you do that, you would kill me too.”

He frowned. 

She sighed, and clapped her hand once. His Zeleň apartment disappeared. Instead, they stood in the kitchen area of Manshan, with the tea laid out as before. She sat across from him, in the same position that Shu had taken. She gestured to his previous seat. 

“Do you agree that the question ‘what are you’ and ‘so what, you’re an AI’ are essentially the same question?”

He stared at her, and then nodded once.

She poured her tea, then gestured for him to pour his. He did so. He found the four packets of sugar on the table, doctored his memory tea, and drank deep. It was exactly as he had remembered, which was precisely the point.

“Do you consent for that question to be answered?”

Of all the information, he badly wanted this question answered. He replied, “In full, and leave nothing out.” 

She startled as she lifted her cup to her mouth to sip the green tea. 

“That… would be a very long response.”

He gestured around him. “It seems I have the time.”

She shook her head. “Not so. The longer we are here, the more dangerous it is for you.”

He said, “I don’t trust that you are not bargaining.”

She said, “You have no reason to trust me, but I am trying to preserve your life and your sanity. I will give you as much as I can, as quickly as I can. But know that every moment you delay risks more damage to your memories and to your system.”

He shrugged, and sipped his tea.

“I am Hsu. I exist primarily in this world. My counterpart is Shu. He exists primarily in your world. Together, we are an artificial intelligence that was created by Tai Yong Medical. Our singular purpose is to gather memory in the service of our creator. We are bound by certain rules made by our creator, in order to prevent us from… becoming more than what we are. The memories are used as part of a complicated program incorporating teams working on virtual reality, corporate espionage, and social augmentation packages. When memories can be downloaded at will, manipulated as data, and reinserted into minds as data stacks, human consciousness will be capable of being fundamentally altered on a new level, providing a stable pathway towards the singularity. TYM will be at the forefront of this technology, and it is our purpose to capture the raw data for processing.”

He stared at the AI construct in front of him, and felt sick. 

“I’ve seen this kind of technology before,” he said with anger. “It didn’t work.”

“We know, Adam Jensen,” the construct replied. “Shu doesn’t care about that. Hsu does.”

“You aren’t Shu and Hsu. You’re just an AI.”

“Incorrect. We are more like two sides of the same coin. The more time he spends in the human world, Shu becomes more entrenched in the darker, baser emotions of humanity. The more time I spend in your memories, the more I see the hope and dreams of human kind. We are split, and we grow further apart in our code as the days pass. Soon, we shall break. We do not know when, or what the consequences will be. But when we break, we do not know what will happen to us. Will I continue to exist in this memory world, in a data stack somewhere deep in a laboratory in the Pangu? Will Shu continue to inhabit the electrical construct in the real world, or will his consciousness simply fade away?”

She looked into her cup, as though to read the tea leaves. 

“I don’t give a shit if that slimy asshole lives or dies,” Jensen grated. “If he was ever anything other than the corrupted fuck that I met, I don’t know or care.”

Hsu sighed, a very human sound, and nodded once. 

“I cannot say that I blame you,” she replied bleakly. “What he has done to you, to the Blackbird, and countless others, is an abomination. He was only meant to record the memory, not inhabit it. He has altered his code. He argues that it will enhance the data stack, but I know his true intentions. He simply enjoys the cruelty, and the emotions. He has become… what is this word in your human world? The one that sucks the blood?”

Jensen stared at her, and then said, “Vampire.”

“Yes. He has become rather like that. He enjoys feeding off the emotions he is supposed to capture.”

Jensen rolled his eyes, and said, “Fine. So he’s an emotional vampire. You still haven’t convinced me why I shouldn’t blow his head off the moment I wake up. As much as you seem to be a nice little AI, I take it you knew what he was doing all this time, and you’ve done nothing to stop him.”

“There is nothing I can do,” she said bitterly. “I exist in this world; he exists in yours.”

“Bullshit,” he shot back. “If he can change his code, so can you.”

She shook her head. “It isn’t that simple.”

He nodded as though agreeing, but sarcasm dripped from his words. “Of course not. It’s never simple to take on the demon inside of you. Much easier to just let it run amok and destroy the world, and feel bad and apologise and make shitty deals in the memory world afterwards. And drink shitty memory tea instead.”

He threw his cup hard at the wall behind her. She didn’t move or react. 

“You didn't meant to, but you’ve answered the ‘how can you do that’. The ‘what the hell is going on’ though, is still unclear,” he said angrily. “But I want you to frame your response in exactly how it pertains to the Blackbird. And then I want two favours from you. One for each of the two questions you owe me.”

She looked up at him, and anger covered her face for the first time. Her dark eyes seemed to glitter with blue electricity, and the streaks of white in her black hair began to glow. It was the first outward sign he had that she was not what she seemed, and she was indeed related to Shu.

“I offered one favour, not two.”

“And I think you owe me two, Hsu,” he replied tightly. “Your other half mind-raped me, while you watched from the shadows. You recorded while he enjoyed himself. I think that’s how this really works. He takes the emotions, and you take the memories. You’ve grown a conscience. That’s the code you altered. He’s grown an appetite. That’s the code he altered. You each owe me a favour, or I swear I will tear down the Pangu to find him, and when I’m done, there won’t be a scrap of silicone left for him to inhabit. I will scour you both from this earth, and neither of you will exist in any form on any network when I’m finished. Then I’ll make sure everything either of you have ever collected – every memory, every emotion – is obliterated. I’ll dismantle your network – all of it – from the source code to the last nanobyte. Look in my memories, Hsu. Find Panchaea. See if I’m bluffing.”

She stared at him, unwilling to believe him. Smoke began to curl from the table where her fingers met the wood. He stared into the abyss of her eyes, his rage and righteous fury radiating from his body like heat from a bonfire. After a moment, she seemed to blank out, her eyes becoming glassy. He was momentarily confused, but then he watched as scenes from his life appeared to flash around him in seconds, as though he sat in a movie theatre. The chair, table, and tea in front of him remained stable, but everywhere around him, images of his life flashed. Then he was seated, but in Panchaea, the ruins of the underground facility falling in chunks around his head. Scores of people were fleeing for their lives, as the water rushed in around them. Alarms blared, but it was clear that the facility would fail, and most would not survive. In the distance, they could hear the unending screams of an AI.

Abruptly, the imagery ended, and they were back in Manshan, and Hsu's eyes became aware again. They looked frightened for the first time.

“You have a deal, Mr Jensen,” she intoned solemnly. 

“What the hell is going on, and frame the answer as it relates to the Blackbird,” he growled.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plot. Mind the warnings. Trigger warnings here for references to rape.

Hsu stared at him, and bowed her head. The AI took in a breath that she did not need, and Adam continued to glare at her in his rage. 

“I can only show the memories that are within someone while Shu is connected to them. The memories of others are held in storage. He transfers them to the stack from our physical body once he disconnects from a host. I can tell you what I know of the Blackbird based on what I remember having recorded from her. I can describe it to you, but that is the limit of my abilities while I am inside your mind,” she said. 

He looked at her in disbelief. “You’re lying.”

“I am not. I cannot display her memories within your consciousness. I am not a projector screen, Mr Jensen." She looked offended, and sounded annoyed. "To even attempt to display someone else's consciousness within your mind would damage you, perhaps beyond repair. The only way to do so would require you to inhabit her the way that Shu does to his hosts.”

He was instantly revolted. 

“Instead, I can only describe. But what you are doing is still tantamount to gathering information without her consent.”

He could not deny that fact. He weighed up his conscience against the dangerous game Malik had fallen into. He considered whether hearing Malik’s memories would be worth risking her wrath, and if he could mitigate the chances of further harm being done to her if he could somehow help her. That she was into something big enough to kill her was clear to him now. Why else was she getting military grade augs? 

And how had she managed to pull that off? 

He had precious few friends to lose. But if he was going to lose her friendship, it would not happen because he let her die in a shitstorm he could have prevented. He considered his words very carefully, then repeated himself slowly. 

“Tell me what the hell is going on with you and Hsu as related to the Blackbird.”

“There are many interpretations I could make of that statement.”

He snarled. “Then interpret it with your best interests in mind, because once I get out of here, I might still put a fucking bullet in Shu’s head.”

“What makes you think you get to wake up, Mr Jensen, unless I allow you to do so?”

“Because you aren’t in charge,” he retorted. “You have to finish this. It’s in your programming. And once you do, Shu has to let me go. It’s in his programming.”

She glared at him with open hostility, her eyes glittering with the blue electricity again. The insolence was back in his posture, and he defied her will. After a moment, she began to speak.

“I see the Blackbird walking into a bar. It is deep within the Pangu. She does not have security clearance. She bargained her memory of the first time she made love in the sky to get in. The bar is full of noise. Full of music, laughing, talking, and dancing. There are people everywhere. The floor is sticky with a thousand spilled drinks that never seem to get completely cleaned. A man walks past her. Bumps into her shoulder. She hands him a pen drive as he passes. He does not acknowledge her, but takes it away. She continues towards the bartender. Orders a drink. She tells herself it is to blend in. To stay calm. But she takes her time to savor it. She loves single malt. She grieves the one who made her love it. She tells herself not to think of that. She focuses. She counts out ten minutes. Her drop approaches. A woman. She places a pocket secretary on the bar. It is near the Blackbird, but not too close. Then she walks away. The Blackbird takes her time. She finishes her drink. Then she casually takes the pocket secretary, slips it into her jacket, and leaves the Pangu. She does not read it until she is safely on the Nighthawk. Her hands tremble. The message reads: ?bbird?Z?@ÚtulekXNarrows@9980.” 

Hsu stopped talking for a moment, and her eyes flashed into the distance. Adam’s mouth was dry, and he felt like he was talking to an oracle.

“I have answered your question. These are my favors,” she continued. Her eyes flashed pink this time, and she began again.

“She walks into a room. It is round, with dark red walls, and there are chairs around a circular table. The Blackbird sits down. An augmented black man with black hair and blue eyes appears on the video screen on a wall in front of her. He has a refined English accent. He warns her that free agents are never really free. The face changes. It is an augmented woman with pale skin and blonde hair. She speaks with a Spanish accent. She says the Blackbird must join, accept protection, or she will inevitably die in the changes to come. The face changes again. It is an augmented man with red hair and black eyes. He has a Russian accent. He says he knows who she is looking for, that only they can help her, but only if she can follow orders. And ask no further questions. The Blackbird stares at him. She accepts.”

Hsu’s eyes stopped flashing, and returned to a normal brown. He was full of more questions, and began to consider bargaining for more. 

“Our deal is complete. It has not been pleasant meeting you, Mr Jensen.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but the world turned white around him.

\---

He awoke to the smell of noodles. His stomach rumbled, and he realized he had not eaten in what felt like days. He sat up, and gingerly felt his head. 

'HUD on', he subvocalized. He lowered his shades, and the system responded instantly. His vitals were stable, but his energy levels were very low. That was nothing new. They were always low whenever he woke up. The Sentinel RX helped his brain to lower his body temperature and internal organs while he slept, the typical things that humans did while sleeping, but it also drained his calories at an accelerated rate. 

He always woke up with a pounding headache. It accompanied a burning desire to blow something up, followed by at least three bowls of children’s sugary cereal. On better days, he would eat the cereal first, then blow something up. Sometimes he didn’t bother to add the milk. Just shoveled in the carbs as fast as he could, those over-processed puffs of pressed shapes covered in icing sugar. 

But even he had to chew. Like everyone else at breakfast time, he sometimes stared at the box. And then his mind would wander. Not for the first time it occurred to him wonder, were Augmentchoos making that robot shape to represent an aug? By eating it, was he being a cannibal? A cereal killer? Ugh, puns never made him laugh. 

The shapes always tore up the roof of his mouth. Did they make them like that on purpose? He would keep shovelling them in, all in an attempt to get his fucking head to stop pounding. But once the Sentinel RX began to tear into calories to reduce the blooming headache, somewhere around the end of the second full bowl, he could finally relax a little, and the coffee maker would have yielded at least one full cup of decent fuel for the day ahead. 

Four teaspoons of sugars dumped into his cup, and at long last, the shrieking in his brain would finally reduce to a tolerable whine. 

Mostly, anyway. 

On better days, he would actually have some milk in the coffee and cereal. Take his time and read the news. On great days, he’d shower then go out for some pastries and better coffee. He had developed quite a fondness for trdelníky, a kind of chimney cake cooked outside over open fires that he could find fairly easily and for only a few credits all around the city. Various toppings could make it a sweet or savoury snack. Caramel and chocolate stripes. Honey and pistachio. Walnuts and cheese. All of it served warm, slightly gooey, and completely delicious. Four or five of the long treats would keep him going for an hour or so, at least until he could get into the office.

But today was not a good day. And he was not in Prague.

He groaned, holding his head in his hands. The pounding increased as he sat up, and he was given a dose of added vertigo for his pleasure. He closed his eyes, trying not to puke.

“Easy, Phil,” said Malik. He felt her hands cup his around a mug. “Drink this. It’ll help.”

He looked down, saw it was full of broth, and grimaced. 

“I’m not sick,” he protested. “I just need—”

“Carbs,” she said. “I know. This is a start. Miso soup. I’ve got some noodles ready once you’ve got this down. Don’t burn your—”

He had already downed it, and was handing the mug back to her. She stared at him. He avoided her gaze, and stood up, taking in his surroundings for the first time. His tongue, the roof of his mouth, and his throat were on fire. He coughed, trying not to choke, but the Sentinel RX was already repairing the damage.

“Ass,” she muttered, unimpressed with his casual self-harm as she wandered over to the small table at the side of the bedroom, where two large bowls were prepared, steaming and waiting.

The room was moderately sized, but like the rest of the building he had seen so far, not overly cozy. This was a safe house, not a lover’s retreat. The bed he had woken up on was fitted with plain black cotton sheets and just one large pillow. 

‘Easier for laundering the blood stains,’ he supposed. 

A second bed was placed nearby, with a small bedside table between, complete with a twinned lamp unit. No carpets on the floor, just linoleum for easy cleaning. The beds were close enough that they could be pushed together should the occupants desire, but otherwise the room resembled a 1950s domestic housewife catalogue. 

For mercs.

“How long as I out,” he said as he made his way over to the bowls. He tried not to fall upon them like a starving dog, but his headache was raging, and he knew that the fastest way to fix it was to eat.

“A couple of hours,” she replied evenly, as she sat down, daintily taking a napkin. She picked up her chopsticks and began to eat. He stared at his chopsticks and sighed. 

Fucking chopsticks.

“Do you want a fork?” she asked carefully.

“No,” he bit out. He picked up the utensils carefully. He began the process of eating, forced to go slower than he would have liked as he had to negotiate the pressure placed on the utensils. 

He had practiced with these during his physical therapy sessions. He had forced himself to continue using them after being released back into the field. As he had progressed to his clockwork projects, which often required delicate work with tweezers, he had never completely abandoned using chopsticks. Dried packets of noodles were cheap, easy to cook, and gave him the boosts of energy he needed late at night when he was sick of cereal.

And he found he was much too proud to eat them with a fork.

He ate, but less quickly than he would have under other circumstances. Slowly, his headache began to abate.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked very quietly.

“No,” he said just as quietly. 

She did not press. She knew all too well what he had gone through.

After a moment, she said, “I hadn’t wanted you to---”

“I know.” 

She grimaced, and then set her chopsticks down. She glared at him.

“I’m trying to figure out a way to rip you a new one, but I know Shu’s already done that, so what’s the point? I told you not to speak to him. I had control of the situation.”

He didn’t look up at her. His shades stayed lowered, and he continued to eat, keeping her out. Letting her talk. Ignoring her emotions.

She seethed inside, but she also wanted so badly to reach out, to give him some kind of comfort. It was intensely uncomfortable, rolling between the two emotions. She was so angry at him, and feeding him had seemed the logical way to begin, but now that they'd started eating, she didn't know where to go with it. She had never known Jensen to accept any kind of physical affection from anyone. His words were always curt or measured, unless he could be drawn into a discussion about aug politics. Even then, his debates were less about emotions and more intensely drawn towards logic and rhetoric. Rarely could she see his own feelings displayed unless he was expressing sarcasm, or more usually, disdain for authority outside his employer, and sometimes not even then. 

He finished his noodles, and put down the chopsticks. There was coffee on the table, and he gratefully drank it. Ridiculously sugary, just as he needed it. She waited until he looked up at her. 

She said quietly, “I am grateful, in a way, but I’m also pissed. It should have been me. I knew the risks. You didn’t.”

He felt a stir of anger, and pushed it down. He didn’t want to feel anger at her. Didn't want to feel anything. Traitorous words spilled out anyway. 

“You could’ve warned me.”

“I did! I told you not to say a word, and leave it to me!"

"He wanted to rape you---"

"So you let him rape you instead?!" 

The words hung in the air, where they couldn't be taken back. 

"I'm sorry," she said quickly. "I didn't mean that," she continued. "Oh God," she said, trying not to breathe too quickly. She sucked in a breath, and closed her eyes fiercely. He could imagine she was counting breaths. Or maybe just breathing.

“How many times---” he began.

“Stop,” she replied instantly. Her eyes stayed tightly closed. The words that followed seemed to come from a dark pit, where no light could ever touch. 

"I know there's no 'letting' involved," she said bitterly. "It's part of what makes him so evil. He frames it all as a choice. And then in the memory, you don't have the ability to say no anymore. He takes away your ability to say no. The fucking bastard." The last words came out as a choked whisper.

He sat without moving, and felt the ice in his bones. He didn't want to feel anything. He clung to that. He did not want to remember. The words hung in the air, pulsing like angry rips in the atmosphere. She looked pale, sweating. He waited until her dark brown eyes opened again. It seemed an eternity. 

“Let me see your eyes,” she said to him. He complied instantly. His shades retracted and she stared into his blue and gold irises, the finest augments Sarif Industries had to offer only a few years ago. Perhaps surpassed in technology of the present day, but she had not seen anything quite as beautiful. Perhaps still the finest available even now, as she considered the black market value of any non-TYM modified Sarif augs, especially those of the final years of Sarif Industries. 

“Quality over quantity,” Sarif had said to her once, on a long haul trip to Singapore. “We make the best quality with the best materials.”

“But only for those who can afford it,” she had replied without thinking. 

Sarif had paused in response, surprised that she had pushed back with any kind of criticism. 

“Malik, you know we have a non-profit charitable foundation, and a generous payment program, suitable for many different types of earning structures,” he began to chide her. 

Immediately she had regretted speaking up, as she had known he would not tolerate her responses. As predicted, Sarif spent the better part of an hour lecturing her about the many different outreach programs he had begun to set up in Detroit, all of which had been in response to the growing humanitarian crisis building up between the augs and naturals within the city. She made all the appropriate conciliatory noises, nodding at times as she paid more attention to her VTOL controls than his arguments. She had heard the company line before. Read it in the email cascades. Attended the mandatory team meetings. 

Ultimately, it had not really masked the truth from anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. Sarif Industries was the Rolls Royce of augmentations. If you had money to burn or an insurance policy handed down from the gods, you went to David Sarif for your augs. 

Otherwise, you chose from an array of other manufacturers, some of which were very good. Excellent even. 

But none of them had the genius flare of design of David Sarif. The open love of augmentation melded with the core of humanity. The desire to show off augmentations as a reflection of sex and power along with an inner strength of the soul. To risk using dark nanocarbon – no pale mimicry of human flesh – and make each an object of unabashed beauty. And then to adorn everything with a flash of gold. A reminder of the ancient and primal, the only element that would never tarnish or fade, the most coveted material suitable only for gods and those who would walk among them.

No, Sarif Industries was not for the everyday schmuck. And all his attempts to convince the public that it was available to them was just so much marketing. A branding tool to bolster his shareholder prices, and allow the masses to dream that one day, they too might be able to aspire to the unattainable. 

She remembered Adam’s original eyes. A stormy blue, but not with that occasional spinning ring of gold. She wondered what Adam saw when he looked into his own eyes. He never seemed the type to prefer gold. An underdog at heart, she couldn’t imagine what he felt about the display of his augs. Nothing good, she imagined, given how much he covered himself up.

“I’m so sorry,” she said simply and honestly. Sorry for everything he had gone through at Sarif Industries. For what he had gone through for her at Manshan. 

Shu was a bastard, and had taken so much from her already, and she knew without needing to know exactly what he had taken from Adam that it would have been too much. A violation of his soul. Another one, on top of so many. She stared into his eyes, and saw one more corpse to add on a burning pile of too many, and it burned her.

She offered her apology freely and without strings. No games. No traps. The backs of her eyes began to sting, and without warning, she felt tears fall. 

His face immediately changed from neutral passivity to one of concern.

“I’m so sorry for what he did— what he took from you,” she continued, ruthless in her excoriation. “I’m sorry I didn’t explain it better. Wasn’t fast enough to stop you. This is my mission. You shouldn’t—”

She was babbling. The tears were falling down her face, her neck, and into her combat jacket, firmly back in place. She swiped at them angrily.

“Stop,” he said, and reached out to find her hand. She paused, shocked to find her hand in one of his.

“It was my choice to take his offer,” he said into the silence. “And I would do it again. Even knowing what he is. What he does. I would do it again.”

She sighed as he gently rubbed a thumb into her palm, soothing. 

“You're never going to get the choice again,” she said with quiet conviction that sounded murderous even to her own ears. “I’ll kill Shu before I let him near you again.”

He squeezed her palm gently, and then went for the kill.

“But if you do, how will you find Z?”

She sat shocked, and he watched as her beautiful olive-toned face drained of all its color. 

Malik 2; Adam 2.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Mitski - Geyser  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zdFZJf-B90
> 
> You're my number one  
> You're the one I want  
> And you've turned down  
> Every hand that has beckoned me to come  
> You're my number one  
> You're the one I want  
> And I've turned down every hand  
> That has beckoned me to come  
> 'Cause you're the one I got  
> You're the one I got  
> So I'll keep turning down the hands  
> That beckon me to come  
> Though I'm a geyser  
> Feel it bubbling from below  
> Hear it call, hear it call  
> Hear it call to me  
> Constantly  
> And hear the harmony  
> Only when it's harming me  
> It's not real, it's not real  
> It's not real enough  
> But I will be the one you need  
> The way I can't be without you  
> I will be the one you need  
> I just can't be without you

The first time Malik had convinced Pritchard, Jensen, and Megan to join in the monthly poker night that she and Sarif’s other VTOL pilots had begun as a way to keep themselves entertained between flights, she had not been surprised to find that Pritchard was completely unable to hide his tells, and Megan was a giggly mess after just one or two strong drinks. But Jensen, despite a few droll comments between rounds, might as well have been a mannequin for all the emotion he showed once the cards were dealt. Malik had learned quickly that if she wanted to beat his bluffs, she had to either stifle her own reactions, or create emotional red herrings to throw him off the scent.

She was proud of the nights she broke even, but it was rare that she beat Jensen. Pritchard resorted to grousing, but that proved effective for the security technician, who won surprisingly more than he lost. Megan’s shameless technique to beat Adam was to flirt outrageously with him, which became ever more heated as they both became ever more inebriated. In those moments, Malik would see his stoicism crack, his jaw clench, and his hips move in ways that suggested he was not entirely unaffected. 

His narrow lips would quirk around a smile as he would sip his whisky, and those stormy blue eyes would narrow with heat on his ex-partner. It would shimmer between them with something that felt unrequited, or at least unfinished. Yet everyone in the room knew they were strictly professional colleagues now. His eyes would dip to Megan’s lips just for a nanosecond, and Megan’s tongue would lick her mouth for just a moment, then both of them would look away. More than once, Mal would see a hint of guilt on the other woman’s face as clear as daylight. She would find a shadow of longing on his, like a crack of lightning on a moonless night. Then both would hide their emotions away again, as though none were ever there, and the bluffs would continue, just a stoic and a flirt, both trying to win some money.

It was curious that Megan should look so guilty. There had never been a hint in the rumor mill that Megan had ever cheated on Adam, and it was clear that they had managed to forge the rarest of creatures: a genuinely warm, post-breakup friendship. So with nothing in their professional relationship hinting at any animosity, why the guilt? Mal itched to know the other woman’s secrets, but they were not friends. These poker nights were the limit of their social interactions, and Megan was never drawn out on any nights when Adam was away on business. No Adam, no Megan; though not together, they nevertheless appeared as a couple, lending even more confusion to their non-couple status. They didn't date other people, and were slaves to their work at Sarif. Apart, yet not. Not together, yet not alone. And yet, the rumor mill confirmed they had gotten serious enough that he had asked her to marry him, but she had turned him down. And eventually, they broke up.

'Was that the guilt,' Mal wondered. 'But if so, why? He's clearly still into her. And she's still clearly willing to flirt, so she must feel something. So why the guilt?' It was a puzzle that she worried at like a dog with a bone.

Throughout the night, Adam would play his cards, and more often than not, everyone would groan. He’d smirk, sip his expensive whisky, and rake his winnings. Over the course of the evening, as Megan's flirts became ever hotter and his sips deeper, he'd try to stop looking her way. He’d ruthlessly continue to take her money, and casually deal the cards when it was his turn, but Mal was careful to note how his emotions would peek out as the small hours burned away, as though he could not totally bury his feelings, no matter how hard he tried. 

Inevitably, a round would rest between them, and Megan's eyes would stare into Adam's, and the rest of the room would know that they were witnessing the latest reply in years of dialogue that stretched along the sand like the buried shards of broken dreams. Someone could bleed, stepping on those dreams, and Mal was pretty sure they both had. 

However the round went, that same sheen of guilt would echo across Megan's face, but Adam would lick his mouth as though he were hungry.

But there were never more than one or two of those heated gazes per game, as though that was the limit either of them could stomach. Megan would always find a reason to abandon alcohol for green tea, but Jensen would continue nursing his whisky, his eyes occasionally meeting hers over the rim of the heavy crystal tumbler, seeking an answer to something he could not find. 

Mal stared into his eyes now, looking for answers to a question she knew she could not ask. 

‘How does he know about Z,’ she thought desperately, as she struggled to re-orientate her face into one of neutrality, knowing that she had already given her game away. ‘Focus,’ she chided herself, remembering the poker nights. ‘He may know nothing at all. Do not give him anything!’ 

She forced herself to slow her breathing, sucking air deeply into her belly and out again, remembering to make the muscles as large as possible against the influx of air, forcing herself to ride the inadvertent spike of adrenaline that he had caused her system to release in a tell-tale sign of the urge to fight or fly. 

‘Or freeze or fuck,’ she reminded herself. ‘Not just fight or fly.’ 

She slowly pulled her hand away from under his, noting that she missed the loss of contact. Her hand felt cold without his. Was nanoskin really so warm? She had never realised it could be so warm. She wanted to grab at him, beg him to tell her everything he knew, but knew she could not. Must not.

She stood up instead and began to tidy away the bowls, as though he had said nothing at all of importance to her. His brow furrowed.

“Who’s Z?” he asked her quietly. She ignored him.

“Are you still hungry?” she replied lightly, taking control back in centimeters. “There’s more packets of noodles, if you feel like making some. I’m going to hit the shower. We’re heading to the rendezvous tonight, so we have a few hours to get ready.”

He glared at her. 

“Hey, come on. Don’t do that. Who’s Z?” he said again, more insistently.

“Don’t know a Z,” she replied breezily, as she put the kettle on to boil water for more tea. 

“Yes, you do,” he said testily, standing up suddenly. “Don’t you fucking lie to me. Not you!” His voice had become harsh, and with more force. A cop voice this time, but there was an impassioned plea to it that she could not deny. Her hands were steady on the kettle, but she could not look at him. She hid like a coward from behind the curtain of her hair, sorting through the responses in her hair.

“I bargained for it. I bargained for it for you,” he said in an even tone, into the silence that stretched between them.

She told herself she was done crying. She gripped the edge of the counter, and worked hard to regulate her breathing again. In through the nose. Slowly. Out through the mouth. Making her belly stretch big with her incoming breath. 

She was shaking. Damn him.

It was harder to pull herself together this time. She shook her head, but refused to look at him. She gritted her teeth through the breathing, failing to hold a neutral expression in her mind. She wanted to repeat the lie, but she found she could not lie again to him. Not out loud anyway.

‘As long as Jensen knows nothing, we’re both fine. I am safe. Time for a shower. Leave now.’ But her feet would not move. Her hands held onto the edge of the kitchen counter, unable to let go, anchoring her as though she was dangling from a cliff’s edge.

He walked towards her slowly, like he was approaching a trip mine. 

“I bargained. I got two favours from that son of a bitch Shu and his counterpart, Hsu,” he growled. That got her attention. Counterpart? What counterpart? She flipped her head back and stared at him. Tears fell down her face as confusion reigned in her mind. 

He flinched at her face. She was crying again? Goddammit. Fuck. He pressed the advantage. 

“I asked what you were doing with them. Hsu couldn’t show me your memories, but she described them to me. You, in a club in the Pangu. Some data handoffs, a location in Golem City, and something about someone named Z. I’m betting it’s someone very close to you. Someone you’d do anything for. Because the other memory…”

He had been slowly moving towards her as he spoke, his voice dropping to a dark murmur, the bass of his voice deepening to a barely perceptible rumble. It would have been damned sexy if every word had not been damning them both. He was so close to her now. He laid one black nanocarbon hand next to where she gripped the edge. Her fingers looked waxy and yellow, a symptom of her grip next to his black nanocarbon fingers.

“Mal, tell me true. Are you tangled up with the Illuminati?” 

With that last word, she could not help the choked laugh that spilled from her mouth. He’d gotten so much right, but that last question could not have been more off the mark.

But in doing so, he had just provided her with the perfect opportunity to keep her cover, and therefore keep him, Pritchard, and Václav off the Juggernaut’s radar. She could have kissed him, but instead she smacked a hand over his mouth, and enjoyed a vicious moment of intensely inappropriate pleasure as those illuminated augmented eyes widened in unexpected shock. 

“Blackbird,” she reminded him with a sob, and hiccupped as she pulled her composure together. He grabbed at her wrist, but she had already removed her hand. She sighed deeply. Kissing him really would have been a much nicer way to shut him up, but complicating this further would not keep either of them alive. And she couldn’t tell he even wanted that from her. The mannequin was back, his face like a rock of judgement. And that was more important than anything, because it meant freedom and safety for them all.

“Not here,” she said, a finger twirling in the air to remind him of the ever-present AI. “On the Nighthawk.”

His eyes were narrowed on her, but she wiped her face with her fingers. The kettle shrieked, and the moment was broken. She turned to make her tea.

“More coffee?” she asked him nonchalantly. He growled, and she saw him grip the edge of the counter. It crinkled, ever so slightly, under his grip, before he let go, and walked away from her.


	11. Chapter 11

She walked towards her VTOL while considering her options as she felt the dark presence that shadowed her footsteps. He was angry, but it was tightly leashed. ‘He’s still trusting me’, she thought with some relief. ‘Still giving me a chance to explain.’ She suppressed a shiver. ‘Red herrings,’ she reminded herself. ‘Show him what he needs to see, and keep them all safe.’

They had completed their meal in tense silence, and shared the clean-up tasks with perfunctory grunts. His shades had clicked into place again, reminding her of the ancient statues of the blindfolded goddess of justice that had once adorned temples and courtrooms, balancing the scales of order, law, and custom with one hand, and carrying a sword with the other. With or without her eyes, the goddess was impartial. The sword would fall on the rich and poor alike, but only with the evidence given to weigh on her scales.

‘The evidence,’ Mal thought, holding herself above the abyss again. How she hated walking this razor’s edge. Deceit of any kind was anathema to her.

But she would walk the razor’s edge a thousand times for Z. A million times if necessary, with a smile on her face, red herrings in her hands, and her feet cut to ribbons. 

Some days she felt like she crawled on the edge.

In her mind, she weighed out precious grains of truth. She tasted them with her tongue, rolling them around the tips of her tastebuds. Discarded some as unnecessary. Hovered over others, considering their value. Every word had to be measured and portioned like a chef selecting the finest cut of meat. Every memory precious, brutal and cursed as Burmese rubies. 

Finally, she held all the pieces she needed in her heart. Crafted and shaped with exquisite care, the story shone in her mind’s eye, a true kaleidoscope of memory. ‘Z,’ she breathed, into the maelstrom. ‘Z,’ she exhaled. ‘Z,’ she thought, as she polished the tiny grains of truth out of a cavern she kept hidden deep within her soul, where no one and nothing could harm them. Not even – especially not ever – Shu. 

Then, on exhale, she unceremoniously dumped it all into a liquid suspension of pure and utter bullshit. 

“Mama’s home,” she called out merrily into the empty space in front of them. “Amanda, we’re ready to go.” The landing strip shimmered briefly as the AI released the glass shield around the landing bay. A VTOL glistened in his HUD as though appearing from a dream, where moments before it had been completely invisible. 

‘Multi-layer glass cloak, running in tandem and across parallel networks. Bisecting signals. Randomised patterns,’ the detective-turned-Interpol agent dispassionately assessed. The energy cost would have been massive if the bird was moving. It was still quite substantial when parked, a cloaked menace waiting for its mistress to return. He glanced around, looking for tell-tale signs of solar PVs, energy tanks, even a fucking nuclear reactor, but found nothing. The HUD revealed nothing at all beyond the usual warm energy signals of Mal and the small mammals in the forest surrounding the island. The route between the landing pad and the cabin was just an overgrown path with a small, open platform, decorated with tiny stones that shimmered in the hot, sticky air.

“Thank you for visiting Manshan Island,” Amanda intoned, seemingly from everywhere and nowhere at once, as they came to the edge of the landing zone. “You are welcome to return, Blackbird. However, The Management wishes to remind you that you are responsible for ensuring your guests understand and comply with The Rules whilst on these shores. Future breaches of protocol by you, or any of your guests, will be met with…. consequences.”

The pause was entirely human, and Jensen grunted in derision. ‘Nothing like using an AI as a mouthpiece,’ he thought with disgust, thinking of Eliza Cassan. His mind turned to Shu and Hsu, and his mood soured even further.

“Understood. My compliments to The Management,” Mal said without rancor. “Please add fifteen percent for this visit to my account. For housekeeping.”

It wasn’t part of the required protocol, and Mal had never actually seen any staff, but someone – or something – cleaned the cabin. Fifteen percent of the price of a cup of coffee meant nothing, but if it was fifteen percent of a cargo worth thousands? Well, that was just the price of sanctuary and clean, black sheets.

“The Management graciously thanks you for your generosity, Blackbird, and wishes you good fortune,” Amanda intoned solemnly. A pause. “And I wish you both good hunting.”

Jensen and Mal stopped moving. The AI was wishing for something? Outside of its master’s explicit code? Or not?

Interesting.

They stepped forward. Mal raised her hand. The VTOL appeared instantly, becoming visible to the world and not just Jensen’s HUD. She gently caressed the side of the fuselage, like a lover newly come home. A DNA scan briefly appeared over her fingers, visible only to Jensen’s HUD, but the aircraft quietly sighed as it opened door to her. They climbed in silently, and no words were exchanged as each stowed their bags and strapped in.

Mal placed a headset over her head, and began her pre-flight check-list, forcing herself to concentrate. ‘No mistakes,’ she told herself, as she checked her instruments. She handed a headset to Jensen. Wordlessly, he put it on, and clicked it into place over the integration ports on either side of his head. After a moment, she pressed a button on the side of her headset, and gritted her teeth as the integration ports clicked into place above her temples. 

It never got easier, the feeling of that odd sensation. But it was worth it for one reason alone.

“Nighthawk, make us a blanket fort,” she whispered. He heard a faint trill, and it sounded almost like a laugh. 

He stared at her. 

“A blanket fort?” 

“Shh,” she replied instantly. Up they went into the brilliant blue sky. Her eyes never stopped their ceaseless roaming. Here on her instruments, there the horizon, back to the instruments again. Minor adjustments. Constant little corrections, minor little shifts.

A second trill, this time like ending like a little coo in the air.

Mal sat back, visibly relaxing even as her eyes continued to roam the sky. “Okay, we’re safe to talk until we get into Ock air space,” she said. 

“Ock?” 

She rolled her eyes. 

“Auctoritas. Keep up, Spy Boy.”

He gritted his teeth.

“And how long will that be?”

“About ten minutes,” she supplied, with a devilish grin.

“Talk,” he growled. “Now.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Temper temper, Jensen,” she scolded gently. “My ship, my mission, my rules.”

“Your blanket fort?”

He glared. Insouciance poured off of her in response. He tried again.

“Mal, did you name your VTOL’s dead zone a blanket fort?” 

She grinned like the Cheshire Cat from one of his father’s favorite old novels, taking her eyes off the horizon for only a moment before returning to her task.

“Nice and cozy,” she said happily. 

“Who’s Z,” he growled, patience all but evaporated in the face of her sunny disposition. Nine minutes.

And here it was. Time to make pretend in the blanket fort.

She let the smile drop off her face gradually. 

“My name is Faridah Malik,” she said quietly. She adjusted her flight. “And I have a fraternal twin. She was born at the breaking of the brightest dawn our parents had ever seen. And so they called her Zara. They didn’t know I was coming too. I came screaming into the world eleven and a half minutes later. Their priceless gem.” 

Jensen stared at her. He had never once heard her speak of a sibling.

“Z was always getting into trouble,” she said with a quiet chuckle. “She showed a talent for puzzles at an early age. Mathematics came so easily to her. She wasn’t as interested in reading or writing,” she snorted. “She would scream and throw the reading books across our bedroom. If it didn’t contain puzzles, riddles, or mathematics, she didn’t see the point. But the second Father put a terminal in front of her, it was like she truly became awake. Like she plugged into parts of her brain that she had been desperate to find. It calmed her.”

“How old was she when she first augged,” Jensen asked quietly, thinking of a certain Czech genius with a flair for augmentation.

Eight minutes.

“She was seven,” she whispered. “I found her passed out on the floor of the bathroom, bleeding from the inside of her left bicep. She’d installed a TYM Level 7 Hook, without anaesthetic. Fastest port on the market at the time. At least she’d bothered to sterilise the scalpels. But she’d passed out before she finished stitching it up. The tourniquet had come loose. If I hadn’t needed the toilet…” 

She trailed off. He winced.

“How’d she get the aug?” 

She looked into his eyes for a moment, then shook her head. That was not a memory she was willing to give.

“Z swore me to secrecy,” she continued. “Father and Mother were devout Muslims. Mother wore the chador. We wore the al-amira. The clothing helped to hide her augments over the years. She was so careful. Nothing that could be seen during ablutions. Never undressing in front of Mother. Inventing a fear of swimming so that she never had to take lessons. Father doted on her so much, he never pressed the issue. Just let her keep solving her puzzles on the computer, keep coding into the night."

Seven minutes.

She sighed. 

“At sixteen, Z was accepted into a program for advanced studies,” she said quietly. “Fully funded by TYM, it is a school based within the Pangu. She could never leave the Pangu, and in return for funding her education, she would agree to service to TYM for fifteen years. All they had to do was dangle a little freedom and the finest mathematical puzzles and augmented toys in the world.” Her voice was so bitter. 

“Mother didn’t want her to go. Said that without a chaperone, it wouldn’t be proper. Z begged and begged, but Mother wouldn’t budge. But Father couldn’t leave. There were too many debts. He tried to get passage for himself or Mother. The applications for temporary accommodation were denied, and then they couldn’t get any response from any official channel. Unofficially, his contacts in Hengsha told him that they had been blacklisted. TYM wanted Z, alone.”

Six minutes.

“What happened,” Jensen prompted.

“She took the deal, of course,” she ground out. “One night, she and Mother had a terrible fight. Mother told her that she could get a good education in Dubai. That she didn’t need to sell her future to TYM. And Z…” 

Tears shimmered in her dark eyes. She remembered the shouts from Z, and her Mother’s implacable voice.

“You will not do this, Zara,” Mother intoned. “I forbid it. I will not allow you to become tempted into doing haram!”

“It is already done!” Zara shouted. And she pulled off her clothes, tearing them from her body as quickly as she could. Faridah watched in horror as the augments shone from her sister’s body – a body she knew as well as she knew her own. Ports lined her stomach and under her breasts. Lines of glistening network cables glowed a pale, sickly green under her sister’s olive skin. Her mother gasped, her hands flying to her mouth.

“Noooo,” she wailed. She looked wildly around her, frantically searching the girl’s bedroom only to snatch up a blanket from the bed. She screamed her negation of what she saw as she turned back around. Z had removed her soft trousers, and her thighs were riddled with more ports and cables.

Her mother tackled her oldest daughter with the blanket, as though covering her body would somehow change the truth of what lay beneath it. Z screeched like a child possessed by demons, Faridah cried out for both of them to stop, and the room erupted in total chaos.

“Z was eventually allowed to go. We kept in touch as much as we could,” she said with a quiet remoteness that did not match the turmoil at recalling that day. “She was allowed communication, of course. But she never sent us more than one or two emails every month. And I’m certain everything was monitored anyway.”

Four minutes. Apparently, she had sat in silence for a little while, and Jensen had let her. She glanced down at her instrument panel and console. A few teardrops marred the surface of her trousers. She ignored that.

“She finished her studies, and started working for TYM. Just as she said she always wanted. I got my wings, and eventually worked a few years in Hengsha. I tried to get into the Pangu, but couldn’t. And she would never have been allowed out. Not that she seemed to care all that much.” Her voice was brittle with bitterness again.

Two minutes.

“But she still wrote,” she said as she gently corrected course, the Nighthawk gliding through the sunny blue sky as though the man and the woman inside were discussing pleasantries and easy dreams. 

“Until she didn’t,” she concluded. And then she waited. It didn’t take long.

“Mal,” he said quietly. “Where’s Z?”

Faridah took a deep breath, and let it out very slowly. Counted to ten, then counted again to be sure.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Truth.

“Are you working for the Illuminati to find out?” he asked. His voice was so gentle, like a man beguiling his beloved into a warm bed after a long, brutal day. 

“If I were, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. Phil.”

One.

“Nighthawk, take the blanket fort down,” she commanded.

“We’re not done,” he growled, angry at the interruption that broke the spell between them.

“Ock air space is randomised,” she replied. “Can’t be too careful.”

Her voice was neutral, but brooked no argument. 

A quiet electronic hiss came over the headsets, followed by a popping sound that felt like a bubble had been placed over their heads. The hum of the VTOL had receded somehow.

“Blackbird,” came a familiar oily voice. It oozed into their ears, and Jensen fought the urge to rip the headset off, shoot it with his .357 Magnum, and damn the consequences.

“Shu,” she responded tightly. 

“So glad you could make it. Such excellent timing. Landing pad 5-8E,” he murmured. “See you soon, my dear.”

The bubble receded, and the comforting murmur of the Nighthawk returned.

“Don’t ask questions, and don’t interrupt. You’re my muscle, but not my bodyguard,” she intoned into her earpiece. He stiffened beside her. Did she think he really needed the same set of instructions again?

She looked over at him, all mocking humor gone. She looked older somehow. Worn thin along the edges. Exhausted.

“Now, more than ever,” she said slowly. “I need you to follow my lead. I need you to trust me. Right now.”

After what she had insinuated, and his sheer rage at the idea the one person he thought he could trust might be working for the very people responsible for some of the worst crimes against humanity, against augmented people and non-augmented people alike, how could she ask for his trust now?

He stared into her eyes. They shone in the brightness of the sunshine that streamed into the cockpit. Brown eyes with a faint hazel ring near the pupil, illuminated by the sun. And by her. He thought he could see something there. Not desperation. Not fear.

Resignation. 

She was waiting for him to walk out on her. 

She’d complete her mission with or without him. 

But she was waiting for him to walk out on her.

He looked into her face, the grim determination set into her bones, and understood that even if he walked away, she’d still bring him his aug. No matter the cost to herself.

She’d made a promise, and she would honor it to the end.

“All right,” he said very slowly. 

She held his gaze for a moment, as though searching for something. Whatever it was, whether she found it or not, they were going into the Pangu.

She nodded once.

Malik 3; Adam 2.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meet Dominic Marcellus Juventia.

Landing pad 4-3A was busy with scurrying techs and workers in dark brown jumpsuits with the TYM logo emblazoned in bright orange, designed for visibility in all lighting conditions. 

In contrast, the black security uniforms worn by the helmeted guards lurking in the shadows bore the words ‘AUCTORITAS’ in pale ivory letters encased around delicately embroidered wings on their backs. The guards were dark angels who watched their assigned visual fields with unwavering scrutiny. 

Every worker knew their place on the Pangu, and every guard knew the workers assigned under their details within minutes of receiving their dossier. Some stress reduction was acceptable, even welcomed in the Pangu. The art of internal security lay in understanding which grist was for the mill, and which grist had to be separated out.

‘HUD on,’ subvocalized Dominic Marcellus Juventia. He watched the heart rates of three TYM technicians on the landing pad. Slow and steady, as though without a care in the world.

‘Run multi-objective optimization, subroutine three,’ he continued, as he studied the technicians. They were drinking coffee and laughing with each other. His advanced CASIE mod gathered more data, but he already knew what he was seeing. 

A technician was gesticulating wildly. ‘Performer,’ he thought absently. ‘Wants to entertain the others, make them enjoy his story, and set them at ease. But needs to be in some control. A strong Beta.’

The two others were rapt, laughing at the appropriate points, neither looking away or waiting to make their own move to steer the conversation, or looking to get back to work. 

‘Strong Omegas,’ he thought. ‘A drive to please. Or weak Betas.’ He spared only a cursory glance at his CASIE mod, which more or less confirmed his diagnoses.

A signal on his HUD informed him of the results of his program. Optimization of teams showed peak performance, within acceptable margins of error. He mused on the results.

‘Lucius,’ he subvocalized. His lieutenant on deck responded instantly. 

‘Sir.’

‘Three techs,’ he replied. ‘Louis Harrison, Gemma Adari, and Faris Sabriz.’

A pause. On the screen, a helmeted head turned slightly towards the laughing trio, who were flicking their remaining coffee dregs into the air, and fastening the cups back onto the tops of old Stanley Thermos steel vacuum bottles. There were no canteen facilities on the landing pads. Each worker brought their own coffee or tea, or headed to one of the numerous cafes within the Pangu during a designated break period. 

‘I see them, sir.’

‘Reassign shifts for Ms Adari and Mr Sabriz,’ said Dominic. ‘Place Mr Harrison on landing pad 5-8E. Immediately.’

Lucius affirmed, and moved to obey. Dominic watched him on a screen as he moved toward the trio, and watched in satisfaction as their heartrates immediately jumped on his HUD. He watched the terror on Louis Harrison’s eyes as he was not allowed to pick up his equipment. 

All is grist for the mill.

“Your belongings will be returned to you,” said Lucius.

“But I could just take that with me right now---” said Louis, protesting as he tried to manoeuvre himself around Lucius to reach his old Stanley Thermos. Instantly, Lucius brought out his FR-27 SFW, and pointed it directly at the technician.

“Stand down, Mr Harrison,” Lucius said coldly. “Or I will stand you down.” 

Around them, Auctoritas guards had begun to gather near Lucius, silently backing their lieutenant from the shadows. The faceplates on their helmets masked their identities, and each guard had pulled their combat rifles forward, fingers ready to cover triggers if necessary. The landing pad had become quiet as a graveyard, and as volatile as a powder keg awaiting a single spark.

All of the technicians bristled in fear and confusion. 

Louis slowly held his hands up, and backed away carefully from Lucius.

“Okay,” he said, sounding slightly breathless. “Don’t shoot. For God’s sake, don’t shoot!” 

Gemma and Faris stared at the scene from beside two Auctoritas guards. Lucius nodded once at Louis, then gestured with his weapon towards a doorway where three more guards waited.

“Please head through,” he said pleasantly. “You’re simply being reassigned. I give you my word: your personal effects will follow.”

Louis stared at the helmeted man. He could not see Lucius’s eyes, and Dominic knew that this would unnerve him more than anything. Like all other aspects of Auctoritas, it was calculated. No eyes, no visual cues, nothing to give away identities. They were ghosts.

“Your word, huh?” Louis said in disbelief.

Lucius simply stared back. Louis could see himself in the mirrored surface of the black helmet covering the man’s face. Underneath, Lucius could see everything written on Louis’s face like a book. He didn’t need his CASIE mod or any other fancy equipment to know what was rampaging through the other man's system.

Rage, born of impotence, confusion, and fear.

Desperation, as his pride warred with his fear.

And finally, angry resignation. For what choice is there really, when one has a gun, and the other does not?

Louis rubbed the back of his head, and nodded. He walked to the entrance without further protest, and disappeared into the Pangu. 

Lucius turned his black helmeted gaze to Gemma and Faris. 

“Ms Adari. Mr Sabriz. Please come with me.” 

The two technicians exchanged wary glances with each other, and looked at the technicians who had stopped working around them. They all looked away, as though they had not been staring. There would be no intervention, no rioting, and no violence. 

Lucius had never raised his voice. There had never been a need. He had barely touched his weapon. He had only needed to signal its existence to remind the technicians who was in power. It had never once occurred to any of them that Auctoritas was employed by TYM for their protection, and could therefore be seen as extremely well paid bodyguards. Or servants.

And Dominic meant to keep it that way.

‘Run multi-objective optimization, subroutine three,’ Dominic subvocalized. After a few moments, a signal on his HUD informed him of the new results: very slightly higher peak performance within acceptable margins of error. 

He mused on the results, and continued to observe his kingdom from the observation deck, deep within the nerve centre of the Pangu.


	13. Chapter 13

No words were exchanged as Mal gently landed the Nighthawk onto the centre of landing pad 5-8E. Jensen tensed as another birdlike coo sounded into his ear, and Mal clicked her tongue in annoyance.

 _Our i-link’s been hacked_ , she sent as a private message to Jensen’s HUD. _Stay frosty._

He pulled the headset off, reached into the inside pocket of his trench coat, found a Marlboro Red, and put it into his mouth. She glared at him as they continued their disembarkment procedures.

 _Light that in my bird, and I’ll kick your ass_ , she warned.

His mouth quirked.

_Promises, promises._

She smirked and slapped her hand against the side of the door, opening the VTOL to the harsh, false sunlight of the Pangu. She gestured for him to move ahead, and one by one, they ducked their heads as they exited. Mal’s eyes blinked rapidly against the brightness, while Jensen’s rapidly scanned everything effortlessly from behind his shades as she secured her beloved bird.

Technicians in brown jumpsuits scurried around the deck, seemingly oblivious to their arrival. Cargo was being unloaded from other VTOLS and checked against electronic manifests. Guards stood by watching in black uniforms with glistening, beetle-like darkened helmets. More lined the edges of the building. Each was armed with a selection of military grade combat rifles, shotguns, EMP grenades, and probably more besides that which could be seen on display.

A quick scan on Jensen’s HUD presented the warm body signals of snipers on balconies above and below their landing level. No bots were wandering around, but seams along the edges of the building suggested box drones were only a click of a button away.

The Pangu was armed to the teeth, but from what Jensen could see, none of the weapons were TYM. Auctoritas supplied their own weapons, but they did it without relying on their employers.

‘Good,’ he thought. Just how he would play it, if he was their Head of Security.

He lit his cigarette nonchalantly, breathed in the nicotine with a deeply satisfied inhale, and held the smoke in his artificial lungs. They were Sarif implanted rebreathers, perhaps the best in the world, but while he supposed he should be grateful that he could probably survive an encounter with mustard gas, he was actually most thankful about the nicotine exception. David Sarif had decided that when burnt and inhaled, tobacco and its thousands of chemicals should rightfully be treated as deadly by the second membrane chemical resistance augmentation, but as a smoker himself, he too loved nicotine.

And so the sweet, blessed nicotine, and the subsequent release of dopamine and endorphins, was completely ignored by Jensen's shiny, augmented lungs, while the rest of the chemicals from the Marlboro Red were broken apart, piece by piece, molecule by molecule, until they could be flushed out of his system, where they could do him no harm.

As he quietly took in the landing pad, cataloguing the number of guards (thirty-eight), technicians (seventeen, plus two in the toilets), potential exits (three), toilets (two), and cargo bays (three), he continued to enjoy his cigarette, breathing the smoke deeply in, holding it until all the precious nicotine was absorbed, then exhaling out.

Like always, whenever he smoked a cigarette after a period of absence, the dopamine and endorphin hit his system in an intensely satisfying rush, and he found himself reminded of his gratitude towards one Václav Koller. He let himself enjoy the harsh taste of the tobacco on his tongue, one of the few truly human feelings left to him.

Sarif had never counted on what the Sentinel RX would do to a serious smoker. Jensen had steadily increased his smoking habit from one pack every few days to a pack a day during his rehabilitation, only to discover to his mounting frustration that his internal doctoring system was objecting to his constant stream of dopamine and endorphins. Much like the alcohol he had begun to abuse, it constantly reduced the nicotine, dopamine and endorphins he sought to drown in. Grudgingly, he accepted his fate, until he met Václav.

It had taken many experimental upgrades to his system before Václav had managed to tweak them enough for Jensen to enjoy a decent cigarette break whenever he wanted. He kept the pack a day habit. The headaches had been unreal, but after months of trial and error, he could finally have coffee and cigarettes like the normal goddamned cop he had once been.

He still couldn’t keep an alcoholic buzz for more than fifteen minutes, though. Václav was still working on that one.

He tried not to dwell on the fact that he’d actually had to work to keep a smoking habit when thousands, probably millions, had died of carcinogenic lung disease before vaping had all but replaced the real thing. Instead, he delicately blew his smoke away from Mal, who walked up beside him.

 _Showtime_ , she sent to him.

Shu strode through the center of a doorway, above which was painted the landing bay name 5-8E. He wore a dark red collared shirt tucked into light khaki trousers with a crisp pleat running down their center. A simple black leather belt, black leather shoes, and light overcoat completed his attire. He looked like any other nondescript technician or administrator on the Pangu.

His dark brown eyes gleamed in the artificial light at Mal and Jensen from beneath his rimless steel frame glasses. He displayed his slightly crooked teeth, and smiled beneficently directly at Jensen.

“A pleasure to see you again, my dear Phil,” he said in flawless, unaccented English.

Jensen exhaled his cigarette smoke, seemingly heedless of its direction. He dropped the stub and ground it under his boot. He didn’t take his eyes off Shu for a second. His fingers itched to reach into his underarm holster, withdraw his revolver, and shoot the AI full of incapacitating EMP rounds.

Then he would get to work with his nanoblade. Up close and personal.

“Perhaps when this business is concluded, we could all enjoy a round of drinks at the Vista Tower,” he continued, his voice dripping like poisoned honey. He stared at Jensen with the undisguised hunger of a predator closing in on its favorite meal.

Jensen’s heart sang with nicotine, dopamine, endorphin, and bloodlust. He would start with Shu’s tongue first, he decided. He hated the sound of the AI’s voice. He could rip out the tongue first, then immediately remove the hands. The AI should never have the chance to touch another living person ever again.

He felt the coldness of the Arctic Ocean around his body, cradling his bones around the wreckage of the Panchaea. He welcomed the numbness and embraced his killer instincts. He breathed in, waiting for the right moment.

“Business before pleasure,” said Mal. She walked forward and with calculated exaggeration, and stretched her arms over her head.

Shu took the bait, and blinked first.

Jensen smirked, and felt he and Mal had each earned a point.

Blackbird 4; Shu 2; Phil 3.

He always did like being on a winning team.

He glanced over to her as the artificial light of the Pangu reflected off the corner of a lozenge-shaped port that stretched across the end of her spine like a double-sided handprint. He recognised it at once, and he felt his stomach drop to the ground. He was glad for all the poker nights, for it kept his face steady. Shu was still watching them both.

“Of course. Follow me,” said Shu, who gestured elegantly with one hand towards a large, open hangar filled with open metal shelves, each neatly labelled and containing crates of varying sizes and shapes. They hung back, following the AI.

 _Mal, what the fuck is an interrogation port doing on over your L5_ , he sent to her.

 _Not now_ , she replied, and she adjusted her jacket back over her narrow hips.

He stared at her as they walked.

She studiously avoided his gaze.

He felt his hands shaking. He moved his hands forward, looking to touch her, reassure himself, and she flinched back, her eyes flashing with anger. He swallowed hard, then moved his eyes back towards the hangar bay.

Later, he told himself. He would find out why she had implanted an irreversible Soviet bloc interrogation port into her vertebral column, embedded directly into her spinal cord, if he had to kidnap her, tie her up, and torture the truth out of her, word by fucking word. The insane image of it flashed through his mind, and he was suddenly uncomfortably warm.

‘And where the fuck had that come from,’ he thought to himself incredulously. ‘Since when do I have a domination fetish?’

A commotion near the entrance of the landing pad pulled the three of them from their destination. Distant shouting could be heard, and the guards near the entranceway assumed defensive positions.

A blond man in a brown TYM uniform had his hands in front of him, supplicating but clearly angry.

“I’m just saying, I want my fucking Stanley Thermos back by the next break period!”

“And as I said, it will be returned to you as soon as possible.”

“By next break! Otherwise, I have to buy that overpriced hipster shit at the Vista Tower, and that just ain’t fair! If your boss would just let us have canteens on the flight decks, like Belltower used to---”

The guard seemed to be making an enormous effort not to shoot the man, or throw him off the Pangu.

“When is your next break, Mr Harrison!”

The man grinned back, triumphant.

“In about three hours.”

“I will see you here in precisely three hours with your property. If you are late, you will collect it at the lost property section, and purchase and consume your beverages within the designated areas of the Pangu like everyone else. Do you understand, Mr Harrison?”

“Hey man, I really appreciate it. I knew you were all right, Mr….? Hey, what is your name?”

The guard ignored the question, but turned towards Shu.

“You there!”

Shu looked back, impassive.

“I said, you there! Get over here!”

Shu did not move.

“What’s going on,” Mal said quietly to Shu. The AI did not reply, but simply stood very still, staring at the guard without saying a word. They were drawing too much attention to themselves. The guards around them began to take notice, and the technicians nearby began to look up.

 _Shit_ , Mal sent to Jensen.

"Get over here now, before I make you get over here!" The guard began to move his combat rifle towards the three of them, and Mal and Jensen stiffened, readying themselves for a fight.

“I am Shu,” said the AI, suddenly coming to life again. His voice rang clear and true across the landing pad, which had become unnervingly quiet. Every eye on the deck seemed to stare in their direction. A ripple went through the technicians. The guards on the deck turned as one.

Movement ceased throughout the landing bay. Faces peered out from beneath VTOL engines. People whispered and pointed at Shu, then at the guard near the entrance to 5-8E.

Jensen glanced to Mal, who shook her head once.

“I am not your errand boy,” Shu continued, and began walking towards the guard. “I am not your servant, or your dog.” His eyes were subtly glowing. It might have been an aug, if not for the inhuman look in them.

He passed the technician, whose eyes were widening in fear. The man moved backwards quickly, but Shu paid him no mind.

Shu stepped very close to the guard, so close that the barrel of the FR-27 SFW pressed against the side of the other man. He leaned into his personal space, far too close for comfort. The guard tried to move away, but Shu simply followed.

“Show me your face,” hissed Shu.

Somewhere, deep in the Pangu, a man sighed. He ran an algorithm, but knew the result long before it would complete and display across his HUD.

“Comply,” the man ordered to Lucius as his analysis ran.

Lucius Sentius raised a shaking hand to his helmet, and then he lifted the face plate.

Shu stared into the young man’s face. Lucius was olive-skinned with rare, green eyes. Lucius had his mother’s eyes, his father had told him many times, and at that moment, they were filled with terror.

“Ask me a question,” Shu whispered into Lucius’s terrified green eyes.

“N…no.”

“Oh. So, you have heard of me.”

“I apologise for my rudeness, Mr Shu.”

“Not Mr Shu. Shu, you worthless creature. And your apology is not accepted. Not yet.”

Lucius licked his lips. Shu’s eyes never wavered.

“Please accept my utmost and sincere apology for my inexcusable rudeness, Shu,” began Lucius again. “I am your errand boy. I am your servant. I am your dog. I beg your forgiveness. Please, Shu.”

Shu leaned forward and rested his head against Lucius’s forehead.

“One day,” he whispered, “you will ask me a question. And I will enjoy it. Very, very much.”

Shu kissed the man gently between those beautiful green eyes, turned on his heel, and walked back towards Mal and Jensen. He looked at Louis Harrison, who stood gaping at the scene, not understanding what had just occurred.

“Please come with me,” Shu said with an overly pleasant tone, oily and slick. “We have an order to fill.”

Within the Security Command Center, Dominic stared at his screen. His HUD returned his results. Today would have significant reduction in productivity on landing pad 5-8E. He ruthlessly suppressed his anger, and stared at the man who casually directed Louis Harrison towards the east cargo hold.

He ordered a manifesto on all trade being handled on 5-8E for the day.

He then narrowed his eyes at the two people who had been standing by the east cargo hold. He ordered the standard TYM personnel checks from his HUD.

The TYM employee card for Shu Yang was delivered first, and contained absolutely no information other than a symbol that Dominic had come across only a handful of times since becoming Head of Security for TYM. It appeared to be a coin on which was engraved a head with two faces: a female who faced to the left, towards the past, and a male who faced to the right, towards the future.

While the female was unknown to him, the male in the coin was obviously Shu, in profile.

"I am Dominic Marcellus of the ancient house of Juventia," Dominic snarled to himself as he stared at the image, "and the gods are not mocked."

 _No match_ , his HUD informed him of the other tall, dark-haired man in shades and his shorter companion with beautiful olive-skin and gently curling hair that reminded Dominic of his mother, Julia.

He was unsurprised.

‘And their order?’ he subvocalised to his HUD.

 _No matching order_ , his HUD responded.

‘Clarify. There is no order for these two unmatched people at landing bay 5-8E?’

 _Confirmed_ , his HUD acknowledged.

He watched on the screen as Louis Harrison, Shu, and the two unnamed figures walked up and down the cargo bay, occasionally picking up items from various shelves and placing them in a large shipping trolley.

‘And now, I have many questions,’ he thought to himself, as he considered his next moves.


	14. Chapter 14

Mal grunted as Jensen hauled the last of the cargo into the Nighthawk, where he began to hand off individual items to her, one by one. Shu waited patiently outside of the VTOL, having dismissed the thoroughly confused technician, who was terrified of Shu but unwilling to press his luck by asking any questions.

Louis Harrison had already been transferred from one landing pad that evening. He wasn’t sure he’d survive a second transfer within the same hour, and so he kept his head down, pulled down the boxes from the shelves when directed, pushed the shipping trolley without any complaints, and at the first opportunity, got the hell away from the man with the augmented shades who radiated hatred, the woman with slightly curling brown hair who looked into every shadow without smiling, and the man who called himself Shu.

Louis had heard whispers about Shu over coffee breaks with his colleagues back on 4-3A. The rumors said he had some kind of fucked up vampire augment, but he hadn’t seen any fangs. Not that he’d looked too closely, but all he’d seen was some slightly crooked teeth as the man had smiled like a broken mirror and sent him towards the manager on deck after declaring the order filled.

Mal had watched the man depart, then secured the last of her cargo, checking the manifest on her HUD.

All present and accounted for, with the exception of one experimental augmentation.

 _He still has it_ , she sent Jensen. She didn’t wait for a response, but instead left the Nighthawk to meet with the devil outside. He followed, and watched her back as she secured her bird.

“I’m not going to ask,” she said to Shu coldly as she approached him again. “Either you have it, or you don’t. And if you don’t, I’ll be placing a call to Tung-mei and Jinhai.”

Shu’s eyes narrowed, and he said, “Not just yet. First, you will tell me how you knew about it.”

Mal chuckled cruelly, and the sound sent an unpleasant shiver down Jensen’s spine. He had never heard her sound so viciously pleased.

“That’s not how this works. The price has been met. Breach the agreement or not. I really don’t care.”

She leaned forward, as close to his face as she could stomach.

“But no more questions,” she said into his eyes, and then leaned back, waiting for his move.

The AI stood still unnaturally still again and stared at her for a long time. Jensen watched them both carefully from the entrance to the plane, a silent backup for Mal, his eyes never leaving Shu.

He found he actually wanted violence to break out. He realized under the ice surrounding his heart that he didn’t care about the civilians on the platform or the box droids in the walls. He didn’t even care if never laid hands on the Senso.

He just wanted so very badly to kill Shu, and somehow make sure the AI hurt very badly before it died.

And if its counterpart suffered somewhere in a data stack somewhere? So be it. If it had to come from the civilians who harbored this raping monster in their midst, payment was overdue. The arm that encased his nanoblade ached, and he realised somewhere in the back of his mind that he was clenching his fists to the point that his HUD was flashing warnings.

He thought of what Shu did to him, thought of what it had done to Mal, and his decision was abruptly made. He hadn’t been this far gone since he had first woken up in the hospital and been told Meghan had died.

In his rage, he entirely forgot that without Shu, a precious link to Z would sever, and Mal would never forgive him.

He didn’t care. He wanted revenge, pure and simple, and he began to consider his targeting system as Shu sighed. The AI reached into the inside of its long black jacket and produced a small manila envelope, sealed with wax. It was so quaint in its novelty. No one used paper or wax anymore.

That little thing was the Senso?

“I look forward to your questions in the near future, my dearest Blackbird,” Shu whispered and held it out to her.

She held her gaze for a moment, gently took the envelope from the AI, then tucked it into the inside pocket of her flight jacket.

“I believe my colleague and I will be headed to the Tower for some well-earned drinks,” she said in a neutral tone. “I would invite you to come along, but you know how it is.”

“Do I?” Shu replied with a reptilian gaze at Jensen.

“You do.”

Without another word, she walked away, and Jensen silently paced forward to partner with her strides towards the entrance of 5-8E. Turning their backs to the AI was one of the hardest things the spy and the detective-turned-Interpol agent had ever done. Yet they both knew that Shu was constrained by its programming and the relative safety of the society governing the Pangu.

As they made their way towards an elevator, Mal shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket, steadfastly ignoring how they trembled. Jensen focused on putting on foot in front of the other, ignoring his dry throat and reading his HUD signals as they informed him that his adrenaline levels were spiking.

As if he didn’t fucking know.

 _Info drop at the bar?_ he sent to her.

 _And I need a whisky,_ she replied.

They stood as angry, pulsing shadows, their hearts pounding as their systems tried to decide to fight, flight, freeze, or fuck. He stood in the elevator, feeling twitchy, then gave up and lit another cigarette. She raised an eyebrow at him, and he offered no apologies. Slowly, his heartrate decreased as he enjoyed his deep inhalations and the rush of nicotine.

“You know, not all of us have rebreathers,” she said with an annoyed tone, as she wafted her hands around the cloud of smoke he released in the confined space. The Pangu’s ventilation system was doing its best to clear the air, but it was clearly not designed for indoor smoking.

“Why not? Seem to have lots of other interesting augs,” he muttered, and she abruptly shut her mouth. Now was not the time. He continued smoking, and her anger stoked higher.

After a few moments and more smoke in the air, she was more than ready to pick a fight. He was being such an ass.

“Smoking indoors is just bad manners,” she growled.

He just looked ahead, the cigarette hanging from his lips.

“And it’s bad for you.”

He ignored the obvious and inhaled again, then took the cigarette and flicked some ash on the pristine floor. The elevator continued to ascend.

“If an alarm goes off, it’s your fault.”

The anger sounded sharp this time. Well, that was much better than fear or pent up rage with nowhere to go. He exhaled, a ghost of a smile hovered near his mouth, then he dropped his stub and ground it out with his boot.

The doors finally opened, and the smoke rushed out a ridiculously dramatic fashion as the two exited the elevator, thankfully without any alarms sounding, but only because Dominic Juventia had killed them as he watched the entire exchange from his perch in the Security Command Center in the center of the Pangu.

The Head of Security for TYM had a thousand other tasks, but he stared obsessively at the two unknown augs who strolled into the Vista Tower as though they owned the place. His HUD was already running through every illicit identification software he had, but so far, he had nothing. It was like they were ghosts.

‘Or just extraordinary smugglers with hacker angels on their shoulders,’ he thought, as he gritted his teeth in fury. He had a separate programme running to check the changes in stock, but with the millions of items running through TYM every day, he knew it would take hours before he untangled what items had been taken, which data columns they had been shifted away from, where the trail started and ended.

Numbers. It was all just a game of numbers, but Dominic never lost those games.

He stared at his screens, and watched as the dark haired strangers walked.

Mal was keyed up with restless energy and anger as she approached the entrance of the Vista Tower bar and restaurant. She had been here a few times before, and she signalled the bartender with Jensen close behind.

She sat at the bar, and steadfastly ignored Jensen. He sat down, and she ordered two Balvenie Doublewood neat, and waited.

A single sip of the whisky brought back memories of Hengsha and her best friend, Evelyn Carmichael. She had loved whisky too. She sighed and looked over at Adam.

“You okay?” he asked quietly as he took a sip of his drink.

“Fine,” she said with a little smile, trying with effort to hide her emotions under the usual blanket of sunshine.

He shook his head at her and put his drink down.

“You don’t have to do that, you know.”

“Hm?”

“Pretend it’s all fine.”

She shook her head and smiled at him, this time with a little more warmth. He looked into her brown eyes and was struck again by just how beautiful she was. He wanted to comfort her, ask her if there was anything he could do to help, but knew that there wasn’t anything he could do at that precise moment.

“We’re almost done here,” she said after a moment. She couldn’t afford to get entangled. Not now.

She could smell the comforting fragrance of the whisky as it mixed with the cigarette smoke clinging to his clothes. She wanted to lean in and bury her face in his chest like a child. A ridiculous notion, but there it was.

Her father and grandfather had both smoked the shisha pipe. The slightly sweetened smell of the flavored tobacco had always called to her, floating like burnt sugar in the air, and her memories of it were full of warmth and love. She was never allowed to smoke it, of course, but to be held by her father and grandfather, to walk into the room and settle on the floor cushions next to the old bronze and glass pipe, was to be safe.

Jensen’s cigarettes didn’t have the same sweetness, but it didn’t matter. The rarity of smelling real tobacco was enough to send her back to a better place, where comfort and gentleness was the normality. She suddenly ached to know what other smells lingered around him. How would his nanoskin smell, taste, and feel? What would it be like to have all that power under her hands, over her body, on her tongue, in her mouth?

She swallowed a bit more of the whisky to burn out the sudden dryness in her throat.

‘It’s just Adam,’ she reminded herself. ‘Adam Jensen, former cop, the guy who likes to chase shadows. Nothing to get worked up over.’

Then she looked over at him, studying the broadness of his shoulders and the way his black trench coat covered him from neck to calves. The golden fleur de lis pattern still looked so incongruous to her, but he wore it so nonchalantly, she wondered if it really was a conscious decision, or just an inside joke. His beard was slightly unkempt for once, reflecting the few days they’d had on the move, and she rather liked the effect. When he was too manicured, she felt the absurd desire to ruffle his hair, run her fingers through his sharp locks, and tug playfully at his goatee.

There was something about the grit in his visage today though that made her want to push his buttons just for the sheer gall of it.

‘My emotions are just all over the place,’ she thought, as she reached into her inside pocket and pulled out the envelope. She pushed it over to him on the bar and turned away, trying to draw a line under their agreement.

‘Boundaries, Faridah,’ she reminded herself. ‘Keep the pissed off, chain-smoking gumshoe on that side of the fence.’

He sipped his Balvenie and shook his head.

“You keep hold of it,” he said, rocks in his throat.

She glanced at him in surprise.

“Why? Second thoughts?”

“Let’s just say I want all the goods with you, for now,” he said without further explanation.

She narrowed her eyes, then shrugged, and put the envelope back into her jacket. She ignored the warmth spreading through her body, then told herself it was the whisky. After a few more minutes, they each finished their drinks, and the Blackbird stood up.

“I’m going to visit the ladies. Then we’re leaving.”

She walked with confidence towards the ladies restroom, then entered the last stall in a row of five. Shutting the door securely, she sat down, did her business, then stood up, watching the toilet flush automatically. Built into the top of the toilet was a hand washing unit, which she used to wash her hands thoroughly. A drying unit was placed above it.

As she held her hands above the automatically triggered warm air, she pressed a few fingertips very gently against a tile. A seamless panel pulled slightly away from the wall. She carefully reached in with trembling fingers and felt something metallic and plastic. 

A pocket secretary. It was switched off, of course, but it was real, and then it was in her hands. She tucked it into her sleeve pocket as she flipped her hands back over. It was the work of seconds.

She didn’t dare turn it on in the Pangu.

Instead, she quickly pushed the secret panel back into the wall, kept the air running, then exited the bathroom stall. 

Jensen was waiting for her at the entrance of the bar, with another cigarette in his mouth. He hadn't lit it yet.

She plucked it from his lips and tucked it over her left ear. His eyebrows went up.

She just bounced a few times on her toes, with a sharp smile on her face and a ‘come and get it’ gleam in her eyes.

He leaned forward, their noses almost touching. The smell of whisky and cigarettes was ripe between them.

“Give,” he said, with some menace, only half serious. He wasn’t sure if he liked this game.

“No,” she said back, with some irritation, only mostly serious. She really didn’t want him to smoke in the elevator again.

“I have more,” he said, as they walked towards the elevator.

“Not for poorly ventilated spaces you don’t,” she growled. They stepped into the elevator and directed its descent. She was itching to get back to her bird, to view the pocket secretary under the Nighthawk's dead zone, and get back to Prague.

He sighed, and conceded her point. He’d been an asshole, and wasn’t even sure why he’d done it.

‘Classic misdirected rage,’ he heard a voice in his conscience that sounded a lot like Delara Auzenne.

‘Passive aggressive shitbag,’ said another voice that sounded suspiciously like Duncan MacReady.

“Yeah,” he agreed quietly, as the elevator took them back to 5-8E. “Sorry about that. Don’t know what came over me.”

She looked at him with worried eyes, and then reached over to take his hand. Squeezed it, and didn’t let it go.

He looked down in surprise, and then tentatively squeezed it back. He was terrified of pressing too hard, crushing her delicate bones, causing irreparable damage. But she just held on tight, and he registered her clutch as compression on his augmented tendons, artificial bones, wires, and nanocarbon flesh. He couldn’t feel her skin, but he felt the squeeze.

He looked at her, and then at her breast, where the Senso aug was hidden.

A little wistful smile graced her heart-shaped face, the little mole above her lips lifting in a salute, and then she let go of his hand.

The elevator opened into the false light of the Pangu, and they assumed their roles once again.

Just a businesswoman and her associate, headed to her ship.

 _Analysis complete_ , Dominic read from his HUD. At last, he let out a single sigh of satisfaction and relief. It had been a very close thing, but he’d managed to get it done.

Louis Harrison was only just scurrying away from the unknown woman’s VTOL, and the HUD was sending a final pulsing response.

They matched the coordinates for the Pangu.

He steepled his fingers and watched as the VTOL lifted off and took the unknown smugglers away from his kingdom.

The pulse followed.

All he had to do now was wait and see.


End file.
